Fallen Angels
by Sashile
Summary: A senior JAG goes missing in Bahrain. A junior pilot falls from the skies. As DiNozzo is trying to find his way as team leader and Gibbs is getting used to a new team, they realize that these two cases may not be unrelated. Fits in with my other stories.
1. Chapter 1

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 1-Opening, part 1**

_Disclaimer: I still don't own anything having to do with NCIS. I just borrow them every once in a while and see how much they'd like to do something that's not canon._

_Summary: a senior JAG goes missing in Bahrain. A junior pilot falls from the skies under suspicious circumstances. As Tony DiNozzo is still trying to find his way as team leader and Gibbs is getting used to a new team, they realize that these two cases may not be as unrelated as they first thought. _

_A/N: This falls in my previous series of stories (the most recent of which was _The Price of Honesty_), which means that yes, this is a story with an established Tiva relationship. I recommend you read those stories first, for this to completely make sense. I've been busy, which was why writing has been slow (I also dabbled in original fiction over on fictionpress; I haven't been completely checked out), and writing will probably continue to be slow. I'm probably not going to be giving summaries at the beginnings of chapters like I've done recently (or, if I do, not frequently), but I will give you a brief run down of the other stories in series._

Deep Lacerations: _A former Army medical examiner joins the NCIS team temporarily, and almost immediately, the MCRT has a case that makes them realize that there is more to her story than they previously realized._

Of Jews and Gentiles:_ The murder of a Navy lieutenant and attempted murder of his active duty, Jewish girlfriend gets the attention of the MCRT. As they look into the case, they realize that it is only the most recent of a string of attacks against Jews and their non-Jewish significant others. Tony and Ziva go undercover as a couple, and in the process of running down leads and figuring out who is responsible, their relationship becomes much less undercover than they ever planned._

Truths and Covert Lies: _Ziva's father is hospitalized in Israel and requests for Ziva, and by extension Tony, to fly to Tel Aviv. What Director David asks of her is so appalling that she fails to realize what is happening right in front of her eyes, and after the director is murdered, it is up to her, and the rest of the MCRT, to figure out why._

Consequences of Love and War: _A Navy physician is abducted from her office in Afghanistan, and her husband, a former Marine scout sniper, calls the only person he could think to call: his former gunnery sergeant, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The investigation takes them through the underground world of the Taliban and those who finance the organization, making Gibbs realize that there is more to his team than he previously thought. _

Lethal Fractures: _Dr. Sonja Gracy is back from Hawaii, and her first case is actually the latest in a series of her old cases, the most recent murder of a serial killer she had been following throughout her career. This time, the killer made a mistake and killed a Marine sergeant, and the MCRT is determined to figure out who it was and why. The why, however, proves to be too close for comfort for Dr. Gracy._

The Price of Honesty: _NCIS Special Agent Stan Burley is murdered in his apartment in Bahrain, and Director Vance assigns Gibbs and the rest of the MCRT to the case to figure out why. After they solve the case, Vance promotes DiNozzo to Burley's former position, and the director of Mossad reassigns Ziva to join him._

_I think that's pretty much it (and yes, I do realize that those were very, very brief run-downs. I didn't want to ruin too many endings for people who hadn't read the stories). Oh, and this story isn't a cross-over; it's more a nod to the fact that NCIS and JAG are in the same universe in canon. Despite the appearance of a few characters from JAG, they don't play major roles. And the first two chapters are both opening chapters; don't get too nervous by the fact that our friends don't make an appearance until chapter three._

_I hope you enjoy, and don't hesitate with any reviews/thoughts/questions/feedback/suggestions/etc._

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Sarah MacKenzie Rabb gave a frustrated sigh, not needing to check the clock as she adjusted the toddler on her hip to know that they were running late. "Harm!" she shouted up the stairs. "If you aren't down here in two minutes, I'm calling Ensign Drewe and having him drive you to base!" She smiled slightly before adding, "I heard he met a new girl over the weekend!" Ever since Drewe started his position in July after graduating from the Naval Academy, Harm came home almost every day complaining of the ensign's endless monologue of the desirable features of the latest 'woman he was going to marry', each of which lasted about a week.

"Just a minute!" her husband called back—for the third time—and she rolled her eyes as she again hefted her daughter further up on her hip. The girl was getting entirely too heavy to carry for extended periods of time. Ninety-fifth percentile for height on her last well-child check; she was obviously taking after her father.

In Mac's defense, when she picked up her daughter ten minutes ago, she thought she was just taking her to the car, not standing around in the kitchen first.

Switching tactics, she called out, "Elliot! Hurry up or you're going to be late for school!" As anticipated, the sound of ten-year-old feet running down the stairs filled up the townhouse. When her blond-haired adopted son rounded a corner to come into view, she shook her head. "Backpack."

"Oh, yeah." He immediately reversed directions, running back up the stairs to his bedroom, and when he reappeared, the green bag was firmly on his shoulders.

"Go ahead and get in the car," she instructed, returning her attention to the staircase. "Harm, I'm taking the kids into school. I'll give Drewe a call from the road." Not a second later, his heavier footsteps boomed on the wooden stairs, and Mac didn't bother hiding the smirk on her face.

"Sorry," he said, giving her his best charming grin as he came down the stairs. "I thought I had everything I needed, and then I remembered that they're still wearing summer uniforms in Bahrain, so I had to pack my whites."

"The Navy has far too many uniforms."

"Saying that to me multiple times isn't going to change anything."

"Daddy…" Kenzie started squirming in her mother's arms, and Mac gave up trying to hold her in place and passed her off to her father.

"Kenzie, be careful with Daddy's uniform," Mac cautioned the two-and-a-half-year-old when little fingers went immediately to pins and buttons. She gave Harm another look as she picked up her briefcase and headed to the car.

"Do you have court today?" Harm asked with a frown in his voice as he followed her to the garage, where Elliot was already securely fastened into the backseat.

"New client," she informed him, standing by the driver's side door as she watched him belt their daughter into the car seat. He stowed his garment bag in the trunk before sliding into the passenger-side seat, which, in this England-purchased car, was on the left. "A British record label is suing their US distributor for loss of revenues," she continued as she merged into traffic. At the loss of the coin flip that marked both the beginning of her and Harm's engagement and the end of her career in the United States Marine Corps, she took a position with a legal firm in London that specialized in trans-Atlantic legal matters, mostly business law, but with the occasional child custody case and criminal trial thrown in. Licensed to practice law in the States—and, six months later, in the United Kingdom—she was a natural choice for the position. And the income she brought in was more than twice as much as Harm's pay as a Navy captain, which more than made up for the fact that she had to don a horsehair wig on occasion. "How long is this trip?"

"Should only be about a week," Harm answered. "I'm flying down to Bahrain to meet with the NCIS Special Agent in Charge, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo." He frowned before turning to his wife. "Why is that name so familiar?"

"I have no idea," she answered promptly. "It could have been on any one of a countless number of cases."

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. For some reason, he didn't think he knew that name from a report or a quick meeting with an NCIS agent while preparing for a case, but he still couldn't place it. "The trial's in Kabul and should only be a few days," he continued. "If I still have time, I was going to return by way of Moscow and see Dmitri."

"You're going to see Uncle Dmitri?" Elliot piped up from the backseat. "Is he coming back with you? Are Alexi and Sasha going to visit? Is—"

"I don't even know if I'm going to see him, Elliot," Harm interrupted with a chuckle, turning in his seat to face the boy they adopted five years ago. "And even if I do, I'm sure he's pretty busy. He probably can't drop everything just to come to London to see his favorite nephew." Elliot gave a large grin at that. "And your cousins have school, too."

"Oh, yeah," the ten-year-old muttered before returning his attention to the Nintendo DS in his hands, instantly back in his own world, and Harm chuckled again before righting himself in the seat.

"So you're presiding over this trial?" Mac asked, still trying to figure out what was so urgent about this case—another captured Taliban leader, being tried for war crimes—that required the highest ranking JAG officer in Europe to leave an already packed work-load and go to Afghanistan for the trial.

"Actually, I'm prosecuting," he replied. "Admiral Radel is presiding." At that, Mac's eyes widened even further in surprise—Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Gerald Radel was the Deputy Judge Advocate General, the second-ranking lawyer in the United States Navy.

"So who's defending? General Thomas?" she demanded, naming the current JAG. "What's with all the heavy-hitters?"

Harm chuckled again. "It's nothing that dramatic," he assured her. "Actually, Sturgis is defending. I wonder if there'll be a basketball court nearby. I'm demanding a rematch." Knowing how involved both her husband and former co-worker got when they were on a case, she was pretty sure that they would forget that they were actually friends, and doubted the two would even be speaking to each other, much less shooting hoops, until the case was decided.

Their first stop was Elliot's school, where his mother took his handheld gaming console before reminding him that Nadya, the nanny, would be picking him up; Harm wished him a good day at school and told him to behave for his mother and Nadya and not pick on his sister while he was gone. From the school, it was only a few more minutes of driving before they arrived on base, the bird symbol of the captain rank on the car's base stickers getting that much more attention from the guard as he accepted their IDs. "Have a good morning, sir, ma'am," the seaman said as he handed the two cards back to their rightful owners. They nodded their thanks as they continued onto the JAG building.

"Be careful," Mac instructed her husband as she slowed the car. "Just prosecute the case and come home."

Harm chuckled as he unbuckled his seatbelt. "I know how to do my job," he replied.

"I'm serious," she said, and she was. "Leave the investigating to NCIS and the covert operations to the CIA."

"I will," he promised. He leaned across the center console to give her a quick kiss. "Don't worry about me."

"I wouldn't have to if you didn't have a tendency to get into trouble," she called after him as he stepped out of the car, getting another chuckle in response before he appeared at Kenzie's door.

"Bye, Kenzie," he said, kissing his daughter on the top of her head. "I'll see you soon."

"Where you going, Daddy?" she asked in her small voice.

"Bahrain, then Afghanistan." She was more interested in the doll in her hands than the foreign-sounding words her father just spoke, making him smile and kiss her head again. "I'll bring you something when I get back."

"A baby doll?" she asked, now interested.

"I don't think you need another doll, sweetie," Mac said, giving her husband a meaningful look. He grinned at her before returning his attention to Kenzie.

"We'll see," he said. "I love you, Kenzie."

"Love you, Daddy."

He made his way to the driver's side, where Mac had her window rolled down. "I'll be careful," he promised before she could say anything.

"I know," she replied. "I love you."

"I love you, too. I'll give you a call when I land in Bahrain."

She nodded. "Good luck," she said. She smiled before adding, "Put Sturgis in his place for me." He smiled and nodded before giving her another kiss, and then he was off.

* * *

Captain Harmon Rabb, Jr. spent the flight down to Bahrain re-reading the case file and wishing he were the one flying. As he jotted notes to himself in the margins, he kept searching his memory for where he could possibly know NCIS Special Agent DiNozzo, but nothing quite seemed to fit. After an entire legal career with the Navy and working with NCIS on criminal cases, he had met quite a few agents, but he still felt like his interaction with DiNozzo, whoever that was, was something out of the ordinary.

Apparently not so much out the ordinary that he remembered, though.

It was a smooth landing in the C-17, followed by a long taxi before they came to a stop. Rabb collected his notes and returned them to his briefcase before rising to exit the plane. Standing right next to a non-descript sedan off the airstrip was an equally non-descript man in a non-descript suit, making the captain frown. In all his times working with NCIS agents, he could probably count on one hand the number of times he had seen one in a suit outside of the courtroom, and the October heat beating down on him in Bahrain made it look even more out-of-place.

He mentally shrugged away the discrepancy and continued forward. "Agent DiNozzo?" he asked.

"No," the man replied. "There's been a change of plans, Captain Rabb. I need you to come with me."

He frowned and shook his head. "Not unless you tell me what's going on."

"We don't have time for that, Captain."

"You have time to tell me your name."

The man hesitated. "Let's go with Agent Brown," he finally said. "Like I said, Captain, time is of the essence. I need you to come with me right away."

Rabb spent enough time around CIA agents to know that's who he was dealing with. "I don't work for the Company anymore, you know that." He moved to work his way around 'Agent Brown', but his exit was blocked. "I have a trial to prepare for."

"Your trial can wait," the CIA agent replied. "This can't." He hesitated again before continuing. "There's a Marine Hornet squadron currently running carrier drills in the Indian Ocean. We have reason to believe they're about to come under attack."

"Then you need to talk to the squadron leader or the NCIS agent aboard the carrier, not a lawyer."

"We can't do that, Captain. The attack's going to come from within. In the form of a sabotaged plane, rigged to explode at altitude." He let that sink in for a moment. "We don't need you as a lawyer, Captain. We need you as a pilot." He gave another dramatic pause. "These are fighter pilots, Captain."

Rabb knew exactly what the CIA agent was trying to achieve with that statement, and knew that it worked. When you're up in the air and people are trying to shoot you down, all you have is the people around you, the other pilots in the squadron. He knew what it was like to depend on someone completely, and the idea of one of them turning on another, on a brother in arms who literally turned his life over to his squadron every time they went into the air, was enough to get his attention.

It took only seconds to make his decision. "Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 2-Opening, Part 2**

_A/N: Thanks for all the reviews to the first chapter! I'm really happy to be back writing for you guys, and I hope you enjoy this story as much as you've enjoyed the past stories._

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Captain Harlan "Angel" McNamee was stretched out on the rack in the tiny quarters she had been given on the _U.S.S. George H.W. Bush_ for the duration of the squadron's two week carrier training exercise, her laptop on the bed with her and a DVD playing, her usual insomniac routine. She knew she could join the boys in the flight lounge for the usual shenanigans—they were Hornet pilots; shenanigans were all they did—but she just wasn't feeling it that night.

It was nothing against the squadron; for some strange reason, she loved the entire bunch of them, even though they were all twelve-year-old boys stuck in the bodies of fully-grown pilots. She was just tired after nine days without a sleep schedule between the flight ops and trying to figure out how to sleep on that excuse of a bed.

She groaned at the sudden pounding on her door, pausing the movie before reluctantly lifting her five-foot, two-inch frame off the rack. She glanced down to make sure she was decent—they almost changed her call sign to "Secret" after she once opened the door wearing nothing but a bra and tiny pair of shorts—and nodded her satisfaction at her Johns Hopkins Swimming and Diving shirt and matching shorts before unlocking and opening the door.

And immediately found herself the victim of a drive-by SuperSoaker shooting.

"Goddamn it, Guido," she swore at the most junior pilot of the squadron, 1stLt Marco Antonellis, as she looked down at her water-soaked shirt. Well, at least they didn't use beer this time. "What are you doing here?"

"We missed you in the lounge," the Italian-American Marine said with a grin.

"Did you ever consider that this is the reason why I wasn't there?" she asked, gesturing at her shirt. And because she knew it was the reaction he was going for, she stripped off the shirt with him still standing there, leaving her in the sports bra she usually ended up in on training missions as she searched for a replacement.

"Aww, a sports bra?" Guido whined. "I hoped for better than that." She didn't bother vocalizing a response as she flipped him off before shrugging on the dry tee-shirt. "What are you doing?"

"_Despicable Me_," she said, gesturing at the computer. Her fellow pilot snorted.

"That's mature," he scoffed.

"It's fucking hilarious. And that's coming from someone who's running around an aircraft carrier with a water gun?"

He grinned before putting on a thoughtful expression, and she fought to keep from sighing, knowing what was coming. "So, you wanna fuck?"

"What a gentleman," she replied, her faint Southern accent becoming thick in her sarcastic reply. "Let me just take off these here knickers and we can go get that goin'." She rolled her eyes at him. It had been seven months since he joined the squadron; the suggestive comments had come after about five minutes and hadn't let up at all. He wasn't unattractive, was actually a pretty good friend and more-than-decent pilot, and was one of the few pilots in the squadron who wasn't married, although you sometimes wouldn't know it by their actions while away from home. "If you wanted any of this," she said, gesturing vaguely at her body, "you shouldn't have slept with every single cute blond communications officer in Japan."

"Well, they're not here now—"

"And I am?" she finished for him, rolling her eyes again as she gathered her thick brunette curls into a sloppy bun. "Guido, I don't fish in the company pond. Besides, do you remember what the guys told you when you joined the squadron?"

"'Angel's not at an amusement park, don't ask her if she wants a ride,'" he parroted.

"And?"

"That you're a good pilot and I don't need to offer to teach you how to work my joystick."

"And?"

"The answer to 'what's the destination?' isn't 'in my pants'."

"And?"

Guido frowned. "There're more?"

"They're Hornet pilots, Guido. Do you honestly think they do anything but think of crude jokes?" Sometimes it was hard to be the squadron's first—and only—female pilot, with all the immaturity that was universal among Hornet pilots—and Marines—and the jokes that went along with it. There was always that reminder that she was different from the rest of them, and there wasn't anything she could do to change that.

But then she got in the cockpit and showed them just what a cute little girl from Atlanta could do. And as she liked to remind the boys, it wasn't as if the bad guys could see that she had breasts and long hair before she shot them down or bombed the hell out of them.

"What're you doing here, anyway?" she finally asked. "Since I've already established I'm not sleeping with you, shouldn't you be off shooting someone else with that?" She nodded toward the SuperSoaker still in his hands.

"Yeah, probably," he replied, shrugging. "But John Deere's on the phone with his wife, Geo and Merlin are off doing their nerdy thing, like playing World of Dorkcraft or whatever it is—." Before he could continue and recite the activities of everyone in the squadron, they heard the alarm to call them to their planes.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Angel sighed. "Didn't we _just_ get in?"

"I thought you were a pilot," Guido teased. "Don't you like flying?"

"At this point, I like sleeping more. I feel like I'm about to drop."

"That's what we got go-pills for," the lieutenant replied, waiting for her so they could head to the flight deck together.

"I hate taking drugs."

"It's go-pills and no-go-pills," Guido argued. "They're not drugs."

"What part of stimulants and sleeping pills aren't drugs, moron?" she asked as she finally found one of the prescription bottles. She checked to make sure it was the stimulants and not the sleeping pills before popping one and washing it down with a swig from her water bottle. "Okay. Let's go fly some planes," she said as they left her quarters and made their way to the pilot's staging area.

Angel went to the bathroom before changing into her flight suit, which by this point in her career was the most familiar—and therefore, the most comfortable—thing she owned. And probably the most expensive.

She _really_ needed to go on a date. Or at least buy a dress.

She nodded a greeting to LtCol Perry—"Everest"—the squadron's CO, before continuing to her plane, right in the middle of the line of F-18 Hornets on the flight deck. "Hey, Angel," Capt Brad "John Deere" Leeman greeted, glancing up from his pre-flight check as she stepped into the cockpit of her plane. "Ready to go again?"

"Just waiting for to the go-pills to set in," she replied. "How's Naomi?" John Deere's wife, an architect back in Beaufort, where they were supposedly stationed, was one of the two squadron wives Angel actually got along with, probably because John Deere and Elder were the only two who didn't cheat on their wives.

It was hard enough to smile politely at barbeques when you knew that the man who had his arm around his wife or was playing with his kid had just slept with a Filipino prostitute three days before. She couldn't even imagine having to play nice or pretending to care about their gossip or taking a trip to the mall as well.

"She's up in Ohio, visiting her sister and brother-in-law," John Deere replied. "She says hi, by the way."

Angel nodded absently at that, her attention already focused on the controls and gauges in the cockpit, making sure her fuel tank was full and that she had enough oxygen, that the radio was working and the altimeter was zeroed and countless other routine things she had on her checklist. After making her way through the list, she was confident that her plane was safe and secured her helmet and turned on the radio. "This is ED-5, ready for take-off, over."

"_Roger, ED-5. Standby for take-off."_ Practically the next thing she knew, she was barreling down the short runway toward the catapult, and then she was in the air, and nothing else mattered.

When she was flying, she was there all the way, she was in her element. This is where she was at her best, and she would gladly give up everything else for it. There was a feeling of power, of being above the rest of the world and looking down, of being in a situation that in seconds could turn to life-or-death, that she could never really explain to people who had never experienced it. _"You with us, Angel?"_ Geo asked, cutting into her reverie.

"Roger," she replied to the flight surgeon, the one sailor in their Marine squadron. "Just waiting for everyone else to catch up."

There was laughter over the radio at her bravado and the challenge behind her words. _"Let's just stick to the exercise,"_ Everest cautioned her.

"_C'mon, Everest. Let's see if a girl actually knows how to fly one of these things,"_ Guido teased.

"You can't see it, but I'm flipping you off right now," Angel replied, and indeed she was, one gloved finger raised in the direction of his plane.

They were about halfway through the exercise when everything very abruptly changed, Angel's entire plane going dark. "Mayday, mayday," she said frantically into the radio, getting only silence in response. "I'm experiencing a total electrical failure, over," she said, hoping that somehow, someone could hear her and could respond.

No such luck.

She had always enjoyed the fact that she was alone in the plane while flying the Hornet, with no backseater. She had the plane to herself, had complete control of the situation and her world while she was in the air.

This was a little bit too lonely.

She couldn't radio the tower asking permission to land, couldn't risk an emergency landing in the middle of the night over the ocean without electricity, couldn't see her altitude, speed, fuel supply. The only thing she had to keep herself grounded—so to speak—and oriented to up and down were the few stars she saw peeking through the cloudy sky and the lights of the other planes.

If she wanted to get back to solid ground with all of her extremities intact, she had to figure out a way to communicate through one of the other pilots. Everest, the squadron leader and the most experienced pilot, would obviously be the ideal, but he was at the head of the formation and she couldn't risk flying up to him without the ability to communicate with the others to let them know what was going on. Guido was the closest, but also the most junior; if she tried some sort of stunt to get into a position where she could use Morse code to get him a message, he'd probably freak out and cause both of them to crash. John Deere was the only realistic option, and she could only hope that he was able to figure out what she was doing.

Using only her eyes and the memories of which plane was which, she accelerated and pulled up, heading right for his plane and the airspace above it. When she was sure of her position, she pulled a move straight out of _Top Gun_, inverting her plane and lowering herself closer to his cockpit.

An incredibly stupid move, considering she had no altimeter.

She couldn't see John Deere's expression through the mask of his helmet, but she knew it was one of alarm at the way his head turned frantically toward the glass top of his cockpit, trying to figure out what she was doing. She already had her flashlight in hand, shooting him a quick message: three short, three long, three short, a universally understood signal for distress.

She knew when he shined his flashlight back that he got the message.

_No power_, she quickly signaled, getting another long flash in response. Again, she couldn't see what he was doing, but if he wasn't radioing the rest of the squadron to let them know what was going on, she was going to kill him.

Assuming she lived through this.

_Told Everest_, John Deere signaled back to her, immediately before he dropped altitude and changed direction with most of the rest of the squadron, obviously heading back to the carrier to land after the exercise was aborted. Slightly disoriented by hanging upside down when she didn't have a horizon to use as a reference, she righted herself, continuing to fly in the same direction she had been going in until she received direction from Everest.

At this point, she had no idea what he was going to have her do.

The squadron leader pulled up right alongside her, his flashlight out and at the ready as began instructions. "Land on the carrier?" she asked herself in disbelief. She quickly flashed out a request for him to repeat that, hoping that she had misread something in the Morse code. Landing on an aircraft carrier and trying to hook the wire was a difficult skill under normal circumstances. In the dark, with no altimeter or radio, she didn't think it could be done.

Sure enough, he signaled the same thing, telling her to return to the carrier for landing, and she began shaking her head, forgetting that he probably couldn't see her. _No comm with tower,_ she reminded him. _No carrier landing_.

There was a pause before his flashlight started again, this time asking if she had fuel to get to Kuwait. _No idea_, she replied. She should, based on her speed and altitude before she lost power, but she had no clue what had gone on with her plane since then.

_We'll head for Kuwait,_ Everest finally declared. _Meet up with the squadron later._

She exhaled forcefully and indicated her agreement, even as she wondered how this was going to go. It wasn't going to be a pretty landing, that was for sure, but there was no way it could be uglier than an attempted carrier landing. Or a crash into the Indian Ocean.

They were about fifteen minutes into their flight toward Kuwait, Everest staying just ahead and at her wing to keep her oriented, when she noticed another set of lights heading right for them. "What the fuck?" she muttered to herself, her head turning toward Everest to see if he knew what was going on.

His entire plane was dark.

She took a deep breath as she returned her attention forward, knowing for sure that she was on her own, that Everest was just as disconnected as she was. She couldn't count of her squadron leader to get her out of this, not this time.

First priority: avoid the fighter jet currently on a collision course. She pulled back on the joystick, the nose of her plane climbing steeply. Without gauges, she had no idea how high she was climbing, but when she felt it was a safe distance, leveled off, inverting to see if she could find this mystery plane.

It was still heading straight for Everest.

She had no idea what she was thinking; running without lights and without any sort of sensors, she was at a huge disadvantage, but she knew she had to watch out for her commanding officer. With a hard bank, she angled her plane down, spiraling down, cutting right into the new plane's flight path, coming right between him and Everest in a move she probably would have gotten in trouble for attempting in broad daylight with a completely squared away plane, a move that was practically suicide in those conditions.

But she pulled it off. Right up to the point that the bastard banked, the tip of his wing tapping the tip of hers. "Mayday, mayday!" she shouted again, even though she knew there was no one to hear her cries.

Even as she was struggling to regain control of the plane now spiraling uncontrollably, she knew it was hopeless; she was mostly trying to get herself in a position where she could eject without getting in the way of the other two planes. Of course, without electronics and without being able to see the other planes, she had no idea where to go to avoid them. And without an altimeter, she had no idea how far she had to go before her plane, with her in it, plunged into the Indian Ocean.

"Preparing to eject!" she said to no one in particular, right before she pulled on the ejection handle, hard enough that she gave a short scream at the feeling of her shoulder dislocating, a sensation she was unfortunately familiar with after spending most of her childhood preparing for one gymnastics competition or another.

The parachute opened without any problems, and as she began her descent, she caught just enough of the markings of the plane she had hit. It was a Hornet, but more specifically, it was Guido's Hornet. "Guido!" she shouted, knowing that her words weren't carrying more than a few feet and not caring. "Guido! What the fuck is going on?"

She hit her head on something, probably the back of her ejection seat, as she entered the water, and it was hard enough to knock her out. Her last conscious thought was that she still didn't know where her friend was or what had just happened in the skies.


	3. Chapter 3

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 3**

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NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo was trying to read the case file spread out on his new desk; at this point, he was well-acquainted with the one line he had read over and over, but the remainder of the file was still a mystery. Despite how hard he tried, he just couldn't focus on upper-level Taliban officers.

Ziva was arriving today.

It had been almost six weeks since Special Agent Stan Burley, the previous Special Agent in Charge in Bahrain, had been found murdered in his apartment; five weeks since they had discovered that it was a Mossad double agent and a group of would-be bioterrorists who were behind it; four weeks since Ziva left for Washington, DC by way of Tel Aviv to officially end her position as the liaison officer between Mossad and NCIS and begin her new position as the case officer for a Mossad team stationed in Bahrain, leaving DiNozzo behind to begin _his_ new position: Special Agent in Charge of the Bahrain Field Office.

And so far, it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. He was still woefully behind on all the active cases in Bahrain—not to mention the closed ones, one of which was what he was trying to read up on—and he missed his partner—former partner—and girlfriend of more than two years.

The entrance of another person into the field agent office again distracted DiNozzo from his reading. He glanced up to see Special Agent Todd Freiler, the junior field agent, slide into his chair at the desk closest to the door. "What've you got?" DiNozzo asked with a sigh. He could barely handle the cases he already had—including the one he seemed to be incapable of getting through before he had to brief the JAG captain on it—and wasn't feeling like hearing about the new minor cases from the base MPs.

"Actually, nothing," the young blond agent replied, leaving DiNozzo pleasantly surprised. "Apparently, it's been pretty quiet."

"Knock on wood," DiNozzo murmured. He held up the folder he had been trying to get through. "You know anything about this?"

"About manila folders?" Freiler asked.

"Smartass," DiNozzo replied, before remembering that Freiler didn't appreciate profanity. He was going to have to figure out how to turn the junior agent's name into a nickname; too bad not everyone had a name that just lend itself to being mocked, like McGee.

He didn't think he'd miss his little McGoo so soon.

"I couldn't care less about manila folders, Manila in the Philipines, or anything else involving manila. Or folders." He frowned, trying to redirect his thoughts. He really had been staring at that file too long. "About the case I'm supposed to be briefing Captain Rabb on in," he checked his watch, "five hours."

"The Taliban thing in Afghanistan?" DiNozzo nodded. "No idea. That was Kim's case." Yet another change to happen in that office recently; the previous senior field agent, Kim Tomblin, had left to accept a new position in San Diego to be with her boyfriend, a pediatrician at the Navy hospital there. He still hadn't found a replacement for her yet, a process that wouldn't be easy. It wasn't as if NCIS had a backroom somewhere filled with Arabic-speaking, Marine officers-turned-special agents who knew the anti-terrorism game.

It was too bad Ziva wouldn't be working directly with NCIS anymore. His team could use someone with her expertise.

The thought of Ziva brought him back to the manner at hand; not the case file, but the arrival of the Mossad officer, and again wondered why she had refused to give him her flight information. Must be some sort of super-spy Mossad thing. "You don't happen to have flight schedules into the airport handy, do you?" he asked his junior agent. The way Freiler's eyes left DiNozzo's to a spot somewhere above his shoulder was more than enough of an answer. "Hey, sweetcheeks," he said casually. "I didn't even hear the door open."

He felt the cascade of black curls fall over his shoulder before he heard her distinctive chuckle, right into his ear. "That would have defeated the purpose, my little hairy butt," she said in a sing-song tone that he couldn't help but smile at.

He turned in his chair to fully face her, one hand on a khaki-clad hip as she leaned down to kiss him. "Welcome back," he said in a low tone, earning a smile and another kiss, interrupted by Freiler clearing his throat.

"Good to see you again, Officer David," the junior agent greeted when both members of the couple looked up at him.

"Thank you, Agent Freiler," she replied with a nod as she straightened. "How is your family?"

"They're good, thanks," he answered. "Bryn would love to have you guys over for dinner soon." DiNozzo's eyebrows rose; not only was Bryn Freiler a terrible cook, but the Mormon couple had all sorts of perfect little blond children running around, and that didn't sound like a relaxing evening to him.

"We will have to set that up," Ziva replied diplomatically before he had the opportunity to say anything. DiNozzo glowered briefly at her and she rolled her eyes at him. "Or we can have you over after we have settled into a place." Well, that was better than the alternative, but at the moment, he had other concerns that were a lot more immediate.

"What time did you get in?" he asked.

"Long enough ago for me to have already checked in upstairs," she replied, a knowing expression on her face. It took him a second to catch on—he was blaming the mind-numbing reports he had had to read—but he did catch on.

"Freiler, you got everything here?" he asked, his eyes still on Ziva's.

"Huh?" the junior asked blankly. "Oh. Yeah. I guess."

"I have my phone," DiNozzo continued, rising from his chair and moving Ziva aside to get up. "But don't call me."

"Do not listen to him," Ziva said to Freiler. "If you need something, do not hesitate to call."

"What do you want me to do about Captain Rabb?" Freiler asked. DiNozzo frowned; the sight of Ziva and the thought of being with her for the first time in four weeks had pretty effectively removed thoughts of the JAG lawyer and captured Taliban officer from his head, and his work obligations were a pretty rude intrusion into his fun time.

Damn it, no wonder Gibbs had such a hard time keeping relationships.

"Five more hours, right?" he asked with a sigh, glancing down at his watch before looking over at Ziva.

"That is fine," she said quickly. "There is work for me to do upstairs." With the recent embarrassment that Director Ruthven of Mossad felt after one of his operatives had murdered an NCIS special agent and helped organize and direct a terrorist camp, he had restructured the Mossad assets in the Arabic peninsula and northern Africa, as well as the Bahrain office—which was one floor above DiNozzo's office—and put Ziva in charge. DiNozzo didn't know if it was the latent hostility between the two—Ruthven despised the late Director Eli David for being promoted to director before him, and now in the absence of the elder David was taking it out on the younger one—but he seemed to be intentionally keeping her job requirements vague, and she wasn't nearly naïve enough to believe that that meant that he was giving her latitude to do what she wanted. What this all meant was that she would probably be spending more time running her office than DiNozzo spent running his.

In other words, different time zone, same relationship challenges.

But for the next couple of hours, neither of them was going to be thinking about that.

* * *

Tony and Ziva returned to the office with two hours to spare before Captain Rabb's C-17 was scheduled to land, where Ziva kissed him good-bye and ascended the back stairs to her own office for whatever top secret Mossad assassin stuff she had waiting for her there, leaving him to again trying to decipher Kim Tomblin's case report in order to brief the lawyer on it.

Freiler was out of the office, probably down with the computer analysts working on the embezzlement case that had been occupying most of their time over the last two weeks, leaving DiNozzo alone in the space meant for three people. Armed with a large white chocolate latte from the espresso stand in the lobby, he opened the folder to where he left off, determined to get through it before Rabb arrived.

The two hours went by quickly, but by the end of it, DiNozzo felt ready for any questions Rabb may have about the case. Tomblin's notes may have been in some sort of code, but once he figured it out, he realized how well-organized and clearly laid out they were, the agent as always the squared-away Marine in everything she did. Freiler had reappeared about halfway through, doing what he could to help DiNozzo, including pulling all the supplemental material and the case box from the evidence locker.

And then Rabb never showed.

A junior analyst had been sent out to the airport to pick up the lawyer, and when the hour after Rabb was scheduled to arrive came and went, DiNozzo gave him a call. "What's the deal?" he asked without preamble.

_"I'm not sure, sir,"_ the analyst admitted. _"I've been sitting in the airport—"_

"Did you try asking air traffic control where the plane is?"

_"Uh, no, sir—"_ DiNozzo grimaced; this is what he had to work with?

"Why don't you do that?" he asked slowly, "and then give me a call back with the answer?" He hung up the phone without waiting for a response, another Gibbs-ism that he had picked up in the decade he had worked for his old boss.

He wondered when he would stop echoing everything that Gibbs had already done. He hoped it was somewhere before the relationship-sabotage began.

The phone rang again two minutes later, the junior analyst again on the line. _"Sir, I spoke to air traffic control,"_ he began, now sounding nervous. _"Sir, Captain Rabb's C-17 landed almost two hours ago."_

"So where's the captain?"

_"Uh, sir, that's where things get complicated,"_ the analyst said hesitantly. _"About twenty minutes after the C-17 landed, another plane took off."_

DiNozzo waited for him to get to the point, and when he didn't, finally stepped in. "And?" he prompted.

_"And it was classified, sir."_

"What was classified?"

_"Everything, sir. The tail number, the flight plan, the passenger list… Everything."_

"Classified by who?"

_"That was classified, too, sir."_

DiNozzo had to bite his tongue to keep from swearing out loud, Freiler now listening to the conversation with obvious interest. "Was Rabb on the plane?" he asked slowly. He already knew what the analyst would say, but just had to vocalize those words, more for himself than anything else.

_"I don't know, sir. Like I said, the manifest was classified_."

He took a deep breath as his eyes fell to the still-open file on top of his desk. "Okay," he finally said. "Get back to the office. There's going to be work for you to do." Again, he hung up the phone before he could get a response, his eyes falling on his junior agent. "You better call your wife," he said after a long pause. Freiler gave him a puzzled look. "You're not going to be getting home in time for dinner," he explained. "We've got a missing lawyer, and we have no idea where he is."


	4. Chapter 4

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 4**

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Mossad _katsa_ Ziva David strummed her fingers absently against the top of her desk as she stared at her computer screen without really seeing it. "I do not know what has you worked up, but that is very annoying." Her fingers stopped abruptly as she looked up in surprise, to see a smirking twenty-something _metsada_ operative leaning against the doorframe, a rucksack at his feet and an oversized smoothie in his hand. He shot her another smirk before lifting the straw to his mouth and taking a long drink. "How did you stay alive in the field with such annoying ticks? Or is it a habit that you have picked up from… other means?"

"Like drinking smoothies?" she shot back automatically. David Cohen, one of the operatives newly assigned to her, had a very impressive resume and the skills to back it up. When he worked, he was intense and meticulous and had yet to fail.

When he wasn't working, though, he was probably the most irreverent person she knew. And she had been dating Anthony DiNozzo for close to three years.

He grinned at the question as he took another long pull through the straw. "Agent Tomblin introduced me to them," he informed her. "I do not know how I lived as long as I had without them previously." He took another drink thoughtfully. "I feel that Agent Tomblin has a history of introducing men to things they could no longer live without. Such as introducing Dr. Cunningham to herself. After all, he traveled to Africa to see her."

"I do not think that was intentional on his part," Ziva pointed out. The lieutenant commander, a pediatrician at the Navy hospital in San Diego and long-time on-again, off-again boyfriend of Special Agent Kim Tomblin, had been abducted from outside his apartment and taken to Yemen, in part for his medical knowledge and expertise in infectious disease, and in part because of his relationship with Tomblin. Last Ziva had heard, his injuries were still being treated in San Diego, with Tomblin setting up shop in the San Diego field office to be with him.

"You have not yet told me what you are so worked up about," Cohen pointed out, finally fully entering the room to saunter over to his desk.

"You are assuming it is something you need to know," she pointed out. "And speaking of need to know, I need to know why you are here. Your mission should not be complete for another four days."

"And you are not scheduled to begin working from the office for another week," he countered.

"But I am here now," she replied, "and am still wondering why you are."

"The mission was a success," he informed her, out of witty delaying tactics. "I came to write my report before leaving for a four-day vacation. I did not expect you to be here." He had a slightly sheepish smile on his face, an expression Ziva was sure he had used often growing up to get what he wanted.

"A four-day vacation," she echoed. He shrugged.

"As I was not scheduled to be back in the office before then, I did not think anybody would notice."

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied her operative. "You do this often, then." It was a statement, not a question, and again, she got that sheepish smile in response.

"I may have been padding my mission timelines when submitted to my previous _katsa_," he admitted. "I had not thought about how difficult continuing to do so while sharing an office with my _katsa_ would be."

Ziva sighed and rolled her eyes. As a former _metsada_ operative, she knew about the need to take the occasional vacation, to go somewhere completely off the grid, even for just a couple of days, and wasn't about to deny that to Cohen. At the same time, her job was to keep track of her operatives and make sure they were operating within Mossad rules and regulations.

Damn Cohen for making this difficult on her first day. Or, as he pointed out, a week before her first day.

"Submit honest timelines to me," she finally said. "I will take care of the padding." He grinned as her words registered, making her sigh and roll her eyes again. "I hope I was not so difficult for my _katsa_."

"I am just grateful that I now have a _katsa _who has experience in the field," Cohen commented. "And you have still not told me why you are here. Should you not be looking for a place to live? I know for a fact that Agent DiNozzo had not been doing so in your absence."

"Please tell me that you have not been performing surveillance on the NCIS Special Agent in Charge in this country."

She didn't quite know what to make of the grin he gave her.

"I will begin my apartment search tomorrow morning," she informed him in lieu of a response. "There were just a few things that I figured I could do tonight."

"Things other than Agent DiNozzo?" Cohen teased. "It would have been funnier in English," he said after a few beats.

"I doubt that," Ziva said dryly. "Tony had to return to the office," she said, nodding toward the stairway that led directly to the field agent office downstairs.

"Is he working on a case?"

"There is a Navy lawyer coming to be briefed on a former case."

"From Afghanistan?"

"I believe so, but I am not sure."

Cohen nodded thoughtfully. "I am familiar with that case," he informed her. "I may have been involved with gathering the intelligence for Agent Tomblin."

"For someone who claims to not mix work and pleasure, you seem to have had quite the relationship with Kim Tomblin."

"I think we all know where Agent Tomblin stands on any men who are not Dr. Cunningham." Ziva smiled slightly at that, but not because she didn't believe Cohen; knowing the _metsada_ operative, and knowing the NCIS agent, it was much easier to believe that they would work well together without sleeping together than the alternative. Tomblin was a former Marine and was known throughout NCIS for her intensity; during his time in special operations of the Israeli Defense Force, Cohen had worked with a Marine unit and gained a profound respect for the training and professionalism of those he fought alongside. Although Tomblin apparently had no issues with 'mixing work with pleasure', as Cohen had put it during a previous mission—she had met Dr. Jeff Cunningham when they were deployed together to Iraq years before, and had slept with Special Agent Stan Burley, the previous SAC in Bahrain, on a few occasions before she decided to go back to San Diego with Cunningham—when she was working, she was intense about it, and that was all she did. Besides, the two both had irreverent attitudes that the other would have appreciated.

"It is too bad you did not kill this person while you were gathering intelligence," Ziva commented. "If you had done that, Tony would not have had to return to the office, I would not be here right now, and your four-day vacation would not have been discovered." For as nice as the mid-day interlude was to Tomblin's old apartment—where Tony had been staying since the former senior field left for San Diego—it wasn't nearly long enough to make up for four weeks apart, and while she had known that there was a possibility that their reunion would be interrupted by work—she knew from their daily calls that Tony was still trying to get a feel for the new job, and them being an agent short wasn't helping anything—it was still disappointing.

"These are excellent points," Cohen agreed, not giving an explanation about why he _hadn't_ killed the Taliban officer in question, which made Ziva suspect that there was more to the case than just the broad generalities that Tony had given her.

Before she could ask, there was the sound of knuckles against the still-open door, and both Mossad operatives turned to see Special Agent Tony DiNozzo standing there, using the main door instead of the side stairwell on agreement with Ziva about the privacy of both of their offices. "Sorry to interrupt what I'm sure was a very relevant conversation," he said, his expression tight.

"You are done with Captain Rabb?" Ziva asked, glancing down at her watch. Tony snorted derisively.

"Right," he replied before becoming serious. "Rabb didn't show," he said. "His plane landed, then another plane took off, and now we have no idea where he is."

"He was abducted?" Ziva asked with a frown. Tony gave an exaggerated shrug, a sure sign he was agitated.

"Abducted, lied to, left willingly, went back home to his family, decided to take a side trip to the moon, I have no idea." His eyes went down to the file in his hands before returning to Ziva's face. "But I have to find him. I don't know when I'm coming home."

She nodded her understanding; in her years with NCIS, she hadn't been involved in many searches for sailors or Marines on unauthorized leave—that was a job of a separate division of NCIS—but she knew enough to know that a Navy captain and lawyer not checking in in a foreign country was not the same as a hungover PFC who couldn't make it to formation on time. "Would you like help?"

Tony grimaced, an apologetic look taking over. "A lot of this is classified," he explained. Ziva was about to ask what that had to do with anything when realization hit: since she was no longer the liaison between Mossad and NCIS, she was no longer privy to American national security secrets.

"I can help." Both Tony and Ziva turned to Cohen, puzzled expressions on their faces. The young _metsada_ operative shrugged. "I was already involved in the case. I already know much of the classified material. And likely more."

"What about your vacation?" Ziva asked. Cohen shrugged.

"I can go to Haifa any time," he stated before returning his attention to DiNozzo and spreading his hands as he simultaneously shrugged and offered assistance. "I am familiar with the case," he reminded him.

Tony frowned as he thought about, turning to Ziva. "You don't mind?"

She shrugged. "Technically, I am not yet here, and he is still out on a mission. I do not even notice." Tony offered her a tired smile in response.

"Thanks," he said honestly. He paused before adding, "I'll make it up to you, I promise."

Her smile at the words was slightly sad; she knew he hated having to leave the apartment to go back to work as much as she did, knew he was regretting that the job was coming before them spending time together. It was a conversation they had had multiple times before. "I know," she said simply. He nodded once at that before gesturing for Cohen to follow him out of the office and down the stairs to his own space.

She had been in Bahrain for less than half a day and their jobs were already coming between them; she hoped it would be getting better than this.


	5. Chapter 5

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 5**

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David Cohen was stretched out in the chair that had previously belonged to Kim Tomblin, his long legs ending in heavy-duty Israeli combats boots and resting on the top of the desk, his entire posture one of carefully-crafted leisure, a pen being twirled between his fingers.

He reminded Tony DiNozzo of himself ten—okay, so closer to fifteen—years ago; he liked to use his relaxed manner, good looks, and off-the-beat methods of getting things done to cover the fact that he really knew what he was doing. DiNozzo had only worked with Cohen once, but that was enough to know that if he ever needed an Israeli assassin for something, the young _metsada_ operative would be his second choice. Right after Ziva.

"Okay," DiNozzo said. "Once more, from the top."

Cohen groaned, his head falling back against the top of the chair. "Again?" he complained. "I have already been over everything that I can tell you—"

"Then maybe this time we should go through everything you _know_."

The operative fixed him with a look that they must have taught in Mossad training, for how similar it was to an expression Ziva gave him when she thought he was being an idiot. Which was a lot. "You are an agent of a foreign government—"

"And Ziva's your boss."

"_Katsa_," Cohen corrected. "I have no boss."

"You're a federal operative. You have a lot of bosses."

"That is true," Cohen admitted. "But typically, it is more convenient for everyone involved if I do not think about them and they do not think about me."

DiNozzo felt a headache coming on; being difficult was definitely something they taught in Mossad training. "Okay," he said, speaking slowly and emphatically. "Since Ziva's your case officer, you can tell her everything you do. And Ziva and I work together, so she tells me everything—"

"No," Cohen interrupted. "You and Officer David _worked_ together. You are no longer privy to all of her information. Her liaison position with NCIS has ended. And you cannot assume that she will give you classified Mossad information simply because you are sleeping together."

"You see, everything you're saying _sounds_ like it makes sense, but I don't know if I like your tone."

Cohen smiled slightly at DiNozzo's words before giving a casual shrug. "Believe what you want," he said, "but I am not saying anything further until I receive word from my _boss_ that it is acceptable."

DiNozzo pulled his phone from his pocket, his eyes not leaving Cohen as he pressed a familiar number. "Hey, Sweetcheeks," he said, still looking at the _metsada_ operative. "We need you to settle an argument."

_"Already?"_ Ziva replied, sounding amused. _"I will be down in a few minutes. Am I allowed to use the back stairs?"_

"Yeah, sure," he replied, knowing that she was going to regardless of what he said. He hung up the phone and raised his hands in a shrug toward Cohen. "She's coming down," he said needlessly.

"I figured she would. By the way, where is Agent Freiler? I do not think I have subtly mocked his religion in over a week."

"'Least his allows him to eat pepperoni pizza."

"Which is good, because there is probably no other way that he will be able to afford to feed on his salary the dozen kids he will have. When is his next due?"

"Another month, I think."

Cohen was still nodding thoughtfully, probably trying to formulate his next Mormon joke, when the doorway to the back stairwell opened, admitting into the NCIS field agent office the tired-looking _katsa_ from upstairs.

Ziva's eyes were fixed on Tony as she gave him a bright smile that lit up her entire face, a look he had been sorely missing over the last four weeks. "I thought I was done liaising between NCIS and Mossad," she observed lightly, her hand trailing over his upper back as she crossed behind him toward Freiler's desk. She sat in the chair, an almost challenging expression as she adopted a relaxed posture to rival Cohen's, almost exactly matching the provocative slouching she had done the very first time her and Tony had met.

God, he loved that woman.

"I had been reading your report while you have been down here," she opened, nodding toward Cohen, "so I believe I have some background on the case. What is this argument I must settle?"

"He's not telling me the whole story," Tony said, only aware of how much that made him sound like a whiny kid after the words were out of his mouth. The look Ziva gave him was enough to tell him that he wasn't the only one who thought so, so he gave it another shot. "If we're going to find Captain Rabb—"

"We do not know that his disappearance has anything to do with Abdul Hasan Zazi," Cohen pointed out. "Or anyone else associated with the Taliban. For all we know, there was an emergency at his home station that he had to attend to."

"Without telling anyone?" DiNozzo shot back. "I don't know how things work in the IDF, but in the U.S. Navy, you don't get promoted to captain without taking care of details like that."

"Have you called his family to see if they know his whereabouts?" Ziva asked Tony. She could tell by his expression that he hadn't. She sighed quietly and rubbed her temples; she hadn't had enough sleep recently for this. "How about if you do that—"

"That doesn't settle the argument," he interrupted. "Calling his base or his wife or whatever will take two minutes, and then we'll be right back to looking into the case he's supposed to be here to deal with. And right back to your operative not telling me the information I need to figure out what's going on."

Ziva's eyes went from her lover to her operative, still casually lounging in Kim Tomblin's old chair. He shrugged a shoulder. "There is still an on-going investigation and mission that this is a part of. It is a matter of Mossad security."

"Why is it that Mossad has no problems telling everything they know when it'll embarrass someone else, but won't make a sound when it won't make anyone else look bad?" Tony complained. Ziva frowned at the words; Director Ruthven had recently announced the fact that several of the terrorists who had been captured or killed in Yemen five weeks before had been released by the Americans from Guantanamo Bay, an announcement that had the Department of Homeland Security and the entire United States administration on the defensive. She hoped that the ramifications of that weren't causing extra pressure on the new SAC in Bahrain.

Especially since he was the one who urged her to tell her director to make that discovery public.

Ziva looked back over at Cohen and frowned again. After reading his report, she was pretty sure she knew the basics of the case—Abdul Hasan Zazi was a high-ranking Taliban official from the Waziristan region of northern Pakistan, who organized or was involved in much of the violence of the region and corresponding areas of Afghanistan prior to his capture by a Marine Recon unit—but she was just as sure that there was a good deal more that Cohen hadn't put in his report. For one, she still didn't know why Cohen had worked with NCIS and the Marines on Zazi's capture, instead of just killing him himself.

And while she was interested in that information, while sitting in an NCIS office with the Special Agent in Charge, even if she lived with said SAC, wasn't the time for it to be revealed.

"Was there any part of NCIS' investigation that you did not share with Agent Tomblin?" Ziva asked Cohen, turning toward him. The _metsada_ operative shook his head definitively.

"Everything that NCIS needed to know, I shared," he said emphatically. "And I have shared all of that with Agent DiNozzo."

"But that's not what I need," Tony complained. "I already know everything in this file. I need to know what's _not_ in the file."

"There is nothing that will help you," Cohen said, his tone no less emphatic than before. He shook his head. "I have said this before, and will say it again. The answers to the questions of your missing captain's location are not with Zazi or anyone else coming from the Waziristan region."

"And what makes you so sure." Tony's eyebrows rose. "Wait a second," he said slowly. "You finished your… whatever it was that you were doing, a few days early, and came back into town. What were you doing, Cohen? Why are you on base? Why are you so sure that this doesn't involve Zazi?"

Cohen rolled his eyes. "Do not be so dramatic," he scoffed. "I had nothing to do with your missing captain, Agent DiNozzo. My work involves targets of a much different caliber. My reasons for stating that this does not involve Zazi are simple." He held up his hand and ticked them off on his fingers. "Zazi was the heads in his cell—"

"Brains," Tony corrected without thinking. Cohen frowned at him and Ziva rolled her eyes, shaking her head slightly to tell Cohen not to worry about it.

"He was the _brains_ in his cell," Cohen continued. "With him in custody, nobody left behind would know what to do. Capturing him paralyzed anybody who would care for revenge. And do not forget, we are discussing Waziristan. Most people in this region do not know what a light bulb looks like. They would not know what to do with a plane, much less know how to fly one to arrive here or to take your captain in custody and fly away." He gave his signature large shrugging motion. "I do not know who has your captain, Agent DiNozzo, but I do know that I have given you all the information on the matter that Mossad feels comfortable giving." He turned to his _katsa_. "With your permission, Officer David, may I get back to my vacation? If I leave now, I can still make my flight to Haifa." His eyebrows waggled suggestively. "I believe there are many scantily clad women waiting who are dying to make my acquaintance."


	6. Chapter 6

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 6**

_A/N: In case I haven't said this already, thanks for the reviews! _

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NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs woke to the sounds of dresser drawers being opened and closed and German words being muttered. Since his knowledge of German consisted of about five words—most of them swear words—and the harsh sounds made it difficult to distinguish the tone, he had no idea what was being said or what was going on. Judging by the look on Dr. Sonja Gracy's face, and the forceful way she was opening and closing those drawers, though, he was pretty sure she wasn't in a good mood.

"_Scheisse_," she muttered darkly as she closed another drawer. As if just remembering she wasn't alone in the room, she turned quickly toward the bed, a flush coming to her cheeks at the sight of Gibbs watching her. She shrugged, almost apologetically. "Have you seen my reflective belt?" she finally asked. For the first time that morning, he realized she wasn't wearing her usual morning civilian workout clothes, but her Army PT uniform, black shorts and a gray Army shirt and the wrist brace is was supposed to wear at all times.

"Nope," he said simply.

"_Scheisse_," she repeated. She absently wrapped her braid around her hand to form a bun and secured it as she tried to figure out where it could be. "I only use the stupid thing twice a year, and the last one was back in Hawaii." She frowned. "I hope it made the move." Two months before, she and her children returned to DC after two years as the Director of Forensic Pathology at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. As an officer in the medical corps, she never did physical training as part of a unit, which meant that the only time she had to have all pieces of her PT uniform, including the reflective belt, was for the semi-annual PT test.

"What time does the PT test start?"

She clearly wasn't surprised that he figured it out. "Weigh-in is in," she glanced at her watch, worn on her right wrist on account of the brace she wore on the left, "fifteen minutes. I don't even know why I need it, since my profile for my wrist means that the only part of the PT test I do is the weigh-in. Ah-ha!" She pulled the yellow reflective belt from a drawer and held it up triumphantly. "I need to get going if I'm going to make it through the gate in time."

"I can drop the kids off at school."

She waved dismissively. "Naomi'll do it. I have a nanny for a reason."

"It's on the way."

She opened her mouth to respond, but Gibbs' phone beat her to it. She smirked in response and leaned over the bed to give him a quick kiss. "Have fun with that," she said as she ducked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her. He waited until he heard her footsteps head down the hall before he answered the phone.

"Gibbs," he barked. There was a pause before he got a response.

_"Uh, good morning, sir,"_ the switchboard operator replied. It was the new kid; Gibbs never bothered to learn their names, as they never seemed to last long. _"Sir, we have a case for the MCRT."_

Gibbs waited for him to continue. "Well?" he finally prompted.

_"Sorry, sir,"_ the kid stammered. _"Uh, two Marine fighter pilots crashed in the Indian Ocean—"_

"Murder?"

_"What, sir?"_

"Why is this a MCRT case?" Gibbs asked slowly, already feeling a headache coming on. He needed coffee. He hoped Gracy still had some of that Hawaiian coffee in the kitchen. "Fighter accidents aren't NCIS cases."

_"Uh… I'm not sure, sir. My supervisor just told me to call you and tell you that one of the pilots died and that the other pilot, Captain Harlan McNamee, is at Bethesda—uh, I mean, Walter Reed, sir—and that there were suspicious circumstances—"_

"Got it," Gibbs interrupted, hanging up the phone before the kid could continue. He caught a glimpse of Gracy's clock as he turned his head; 5:23, and he was already getting a case that didn't sound like a major crime—or a crime at all—with a team he still didn't trust and barely managed to find their desks in the morning.

He found himself asking more and more frequently why he ever came back from Mexico. And why he didn't go back. With Leyla and Amira spending the year in Iraq with Leyla's family, he was sure Mike wouldn't mind the company.

He pushed that thought back into the back of his head and again stared at his phone before pressing a number for speed dial, almost slipping up and pressing the wrong button. _Time to reprogram that_, he thought as he waited for the call to connect, knowing full well that he wasn't going to be changing anything. Not anything on his phone, anyway.

_"Hey, Boss."_ McGee was either getting better about sounding awake when Gibbs called him early in the morning, or he had already been up working on something. A new novel was the most likely explanation, but Gibbs wouldn't put it past his new senior field agent to have spent most of the night awake playing his elf lord computer games.

"Got a case," Gibbs said as a greeting, not bothering to ask McGee what he had been up to; he just didn't care enough. "Need you to meet me at Bethesda."

_"Walter Reed, Boss?"_ Gibbs growled at the reminder of the name change in response, and McGee wisely decided not to push it. _"Do you want to meet here and drive in together?"_ McGee asked quickly.

"Both closer to the hospital than the Navy Yard." At least, Gibbs was assuming that McGee was at his Silver Spring apartment and not somewhere else. "Better just to meet there. Wake up the others and tell them to get to the office. Need to look into a fighter crash, two planes in the Indian Ocean."

_"Sure thing, Boss,"_ McGee agreed. _"Anything specific they need to look into?"_

Gibbs barely resisted the impulse to groan; instead, he rubbed his eyes, that headache already getting worse. DiNozzo would have known better to ask. "Everything, McGee," he said slowly.

_"Right, Boss. Sorry I asked."_

"Don't apologize."

_"Right. Sign of weakness."_ Gibbs thought his new senior field agent was going to apologize for apologizing, but dropped the subject instead. _"Who's in the hospital?"_

"One of the pilots. Captain McNamee."

_"Sounds good, Boss. I'll meet you there."_ Gibbs hung up the phone before McGee could ask any further questions. He stared at the phone in his hand for a minute before sighing and rising from his seated position on the bed.

So much for driving Gracy's kids to school.

* * *

Gibbs was apparently arriving at the hospital at the same time as the majority of doctors and nurses, the line to get through the gate extending almost halfway down Wisconsin Avenue and the line to get into the parking garage even longer. The supervisory field agent still didn't know the protocol for parking on base; like with most issues, he didn't put much thought into it, just followed another car into the staff parking lot and made sure his NCIS decals were visible.

With the wait to get on base and get a parking space, almost forty-five minutes had passed between his phone call to his senior field agent and his arrival on the surgical floor, but there was still no sight of McGee. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Boss," the senior field agent in question said breathlessly less than two minutes later as he rushed toward the center nursing station, where Gibbs was standing. "The traffic on this base is terrible."

"I know, McGee," Gibbs replied. "I drove through it, too." McGee's youthful-looking face looked flustered at the reminder for a second, but he didn't comment, or worse, apologize again.

Not wanting to waste any more time with small talk, Gibbs pulled his credentials from his pocket and held them up toward a corpsman second class. "Need to know where to find Captain Harlan McNamee."

"McNamee, sir?" the corpsman echoed as he turned in his chair toward a large whiteboard where the patients' names were posted. "Room three, sir. Just make a left right there."

Gibbs, with McGee in tow, headed in the direction the corpsman indicated and easily found the room, marked with a state flag of Georgia and a gold-fringed USMC flag, and inside, a sleeping woman with a mass brown curls spread out over the pillow. Gibbs frowned at that before backtracking to the nurses' station. "Room three?" he asked the corpsman.

"Yes, sir. Captain McNamee is in room three."

"Captain Harlan McNamee, the Hornet pilot?"

"Uh, I don't know the patients' first names or what they do, usually—"

"Is there a problem?" a khaki-clad ensign asked, a frown on her face as she stepped forward.

"NCIS," Gibbs informed her, flashing his credentials quickly. "I'm looking for a Captain Harlan McNamee.

"Right. Room three."

"There's a woman in there."

The nurse—Ensign Castle, according to her uniform name tag—looked amused at the observation. "I should hope so, sir," she replied, "seeing as Captain McNamee is a woman."

"Thought Captain McNamee was a Hornet pilot."

The nurse shrugged. "Apparently, she's both. What do you need with Captain McNamee?"

"Just gotta ask her some questions about the crash."

Ensign Castle's lips pressed together in a thin line. "I don't know if that's such a good idea, sir," she finally replied. "The captain's had a rough few days—" Gibbs didn't even wait for her to finish before he ducked away, again heading in the direction of room three, and the nurse turned to McGee with eyes wide in surprise.

"You get used to it after a while," he informed her before turning to follow his supervisory field agent.

Some days, he really wished Tony and Ziva never left. Actually, make that every day.


	7. Chapter 7

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 7**

_A/N: To everyone who commented in the last chapter how chauvinistic Gibbs is because of the whole 'she's a woman' comment: yes, there is that whole throwback issue (I'm thinking now of the episode _Kill Ari_, with Gibbs and Ducky and that conversation about how it's different because Kate was a woman), this is actually a somewhat justified statement. It hasn't been too long that the Marine Corps lifted the restriction on females in fighter pilot roles (the Navy was much more progressive), since it is a direct combat role. There were helicopter pilots first (I think there was a JAG episode involving a Marine helo pilot), since that can be a non-combat position, but fighter pilots are, by definition, in combat. _

_Anyway, I hope you continue to enjoy!_

_

* * *

_

This time, when Gibbs entered the still-darkened hospital room, he wasn't wasting any time. "Captain McNamee," he barked, and immediately, two dark eyes flew open.

"Yeah?" she asked groggily. Gibbs pulled out his badge and held it up, earning him a few seconds of confusion before realization set in. As if trying to wake up as quickly as possible, the fighter pilot pulled herself up in bed before adjusting it to a more seated position. McGee didn't miss the wince on her face, which probably had to do with the sling on her left shoulder. "Sorry," she said once she had gotten herself arranged, now sounding almost awake. "What time is it?"

"About zero-six," Gibbs replied. The captain frowned slightly and nodded.

"And who're you? Navy Air Traffic Control?"

"NCIS," Gibbs informed her. Her frown deepened as she processed that latest bit of information.

"NCIS?" she finally echoed. "I didn't know NCIS investigated fighter crashes." Her eyes remained on Gibbs for a long minute, confusion still in them, before she finally turned to McGee, the first time she looked over at the younger agent since she woke up, and he felt his breath catch in his throat with the sudden memory.

_The small freshman, dwarfed by her Johns Hopkins Swimming and Diving sweatshirt; her dark curls, still wet from her shower, pulled back into a quick ponytail; her face flushed in embarrassment at the loud squealing of the door that needed oiling as she entered the room a good five minutes after the study group began. "Take a seat," McGee said with a sigh, knowing that there was nothing he could say that would prompt her to show up on time for the next class session._

"Harley McNamee," he said with realization. The confusion she still wore with the situation deepened for a second, then disappeared, a slight smile playing on her lips.

"Tim McGee?" she asked, a short laugh escaping. "God. What're the odds of running into you here?" She held up her right hand. "Forget I said that. I don't want you to actually calculate it." He felt his face blushing with the reminder of what he had been like as a senior biomedical engineering major, or worse, how he must have seemed to the students in the introductory engineering course he was a teaching assistant for.

Gibbs was clearly uninterested in this trip down memory lane. "I'm Special Agent Gibbs. You obviously know Special Agent McGee. We have some questions for you about the night your plane went down."

McNamee nodded, clearly expecting that, her attention again fully focused on Gibbs. "What do you need to know?" she asked. "And I still don't know why this falls under NCIS' jurisdiction."

"Hoping you'd be able to help us with that," Gibbs replied. A puzzled look appeared quickly on McNamee's face, then was gone.

"We were scheduled to be on the _Bush_ for a fifteen-day training mission," she began, her dark brown eyes quickly darting over to McGee before returning to Gibbs' even blue ones. "We were running all sorts of carrier drills, at all times of day and night. Standard fighter training schedule: there is no schedule." She frowned slightly and looked away, then looked back. "I think we were about ten days into the mission when the crash happened. We were running a night exercise—nothing too fancy, mostly take off from the carrier, get some air time in, then land. Everything looked good on my pre-flight check, but not long after I took off from the carrier, everything went dark. Everything. I completely lost electronics in my plane." She frowned. "I have no idea how that happened," she confessed. "I've been trying to figure it out, but…" She shook her head. "I don't really remember much after that," she continued. "The doctors told me I must have hit my head at some point after I ejected, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up here, in Bethesda."

"Anything like this ever happen before?" McNamee shook her head emphatically at Gibbs' question.

"Never," she said. "Like I said, I don't know even how a total electrical failure happened."

"No problems on your previous flights?"

"Nothing," she repeated. "We had just gotten in a few hours before we took off again, and everything worked perfectly. And like I said, everything looked good on pre-flight."

"Anything else unusual on this flight?" McGee asked. The pilot turned toward him before shaking her head apologetically.

"Other than my plane going dark?" she asked, almost amused. "I honestly don't remember." She lapsed into silence for a few seconds. "I have this vague image of Guido's plane—"

"Guido?" Gibbs interrupted

"Lieutenant Marco Antonellis," she explained. "He was the other pilot in the crash—"

"The one who died."

She flushed at Gibbs' interruption and reminder. "Yeah," she said softly. "He didn't make it. What happened? Did something happen to his ejection seat or his parachute, or was there a fire—"

"Don't know," Gibbs interrupted again, and McNamee frowned.

"I thought you were investigating the crash," she said. "Doesn't that include figuring out what went wrong and leading to his death?"

"We'll look into that."

"Well, why are you here instead of doing that?" she demanded. "What good does talking to me do? Unless you think I purposefully flew my plane into the ocean…" Her voice trailed off, her brown eyes going wide. "You don't think I purposefully flew my plane into the ocean, do you?"

"Should we?"

"I don't see why, because I didn't!" She took a deep breath and shook her head. "No," she said a moment later, now sounding much more calm. "And if I were going all kamikaze or hari-kari, why would I have ejected?"

"Second thoughts," Gibbs said with a straight face, making McNamee frown again. "What about Lt. Antonellis?"

The pilot frowned and looked away, her good hand rubbing her eyes briefly. "I don't know," she said, her voice quiet. "I don't even know what I saw."

"Start from the beginning." Both Gibbs and McNamee frowned over at McGee, who kept his eyes on the pilot. He gave a shrug. "Sometimes it helps when thinking things through."

She gave him a small smile, the same smile he remembered from more than a decade ago, when she began to understand a concept or an equation after he explained it to her. "The beginning," she repeated, before taking a deep breath, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular. "Guido joined the squad about seven months ago," she began, "right out of flight training. He's our most recent addition."

"Any problems fitting in?"

McNamee shook her head at Gibbs' question. "No way," she said definitively. "He's most definitely a Hornet pilot. Which means on a good day, he's about twelve."

"Twelve?" McGee asked with a frown.

"Twelve years old," McNamee explained. "They're adolescent boys stuck in the bodies of fully grown Marines." She closed her eyes briefly, trying to erase the image of Guido's grin as she opened the door to her quarters, only to get her shirt completely soaked.

"What about you?" Gibbs asked.

"What about me?" McNamee asked in return, again frowning. Gibbs shrugged.

"They're twelve year old boys, so what are you?"

She shrugged her good shoulder. "The little sister?" she guessed. "The tomboy friend? Jenny from _EuroTrip_?" McGee blinked in surprise, just realizing at that moment that with DiNozzo gone, it had been more than four weeks since he had heard a movie reference.

He hadn't expected to miss it.

"I don't know, really," Harlan continued, forcing him to pay attention. "The guys didn't really know what to make of me when I joined the squadron. You'd think they had never seen a girl before, the way they were acting. But Everest—LtCol Perry—straightened them out pretty quick, and after the first time I flew with them, they decided I was okay, but it was still weird. I was their buddy and just another Hornet pilot, but I was also this little girl that they thought needed protecting." She looked away, her lower lip between her teeth, another expression McGee remembered from a time that seemed like a lifetime ago. "Guido laid it on pretty thick when he joined the squadron," she continued, "but the guys let him know straight away that that wasn't gonna happen." The more she talked, the more her Southern accent came out, and she seemed to realize it, stopping to take a breath. When she spoke again, her voice was slower and even and practically unaccented. "We've never had problems. Not between me and Guido or anybody else in the squadron. We all get along. You have to, in that situation. You can't fly with people you don't trust with your life."

"Antonellis trusted you with his life?"

McNamee nodded at Gibbs' question. "Yes," she replied, no uncertainty in her voice at all. Gibbs' blue eyes remained locked on the pilot's brown ones, his expression completely blank, giving away nothing that he was thinking until he spoke again.

"Then why is he dead and you still alive?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 8**

* * *

After leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda, NCIS Special Agent Tim McGee faced the Beltway traffic to head down to NCIS Headquarters at the Navy Yard, replaying the conversation—interrogation, was more like—of Harley McNamee while trying to figure out how a former freshman pre-med biomedical engineering major ended up floating in the Indian Ocean after crashing her F-18.

If there was one thing this job had taught him, it was that nothing was what it seemed.

It had probably been ten years since Harley McNamee had even crossed his mind, but for the fall semester of his senior year, she had just about his full attention for an hour and a half on Monday and Wednesday mornings while he taught the required study group for Freshman Modeling and Design. It wasn't that she needed extra help; she seemed to pick up on the concepts quicker than anybody else, often figuring out how to explain things to her classmates in a way that he couldn't. It was that, on top of her curly dark hair and big brown eyes and cute smile that she occasionally turned toward him, that got his attention.

And the fact that, starting almost a month into the semester, she was never fewer than five minutes late. A varsity diver and Navy ROTC midshipman, she had pretty much had a full morning by the time she arrived to the study group. To this day, he still didn't know why she chose a morning study group, knowing her schedule and the way it would be.

He blinked away the thought, shifting his focus from the freshman biomedical engineering major and her busy schedule to the Marine captain and her downed plane. There was still so much to the story that was missing, pieces that Harley couldn't fit in, and McGee began ticking those off in his head. What caused the electrical failure in her plane? What was Lt. Antonellis doing? Where was the rest of the squadron? Why was Antonellis dead and Harley alive? What had happened? Did their planes hit? Why couldn't he avoid her? Was there a problem with his electronics, too, leaving the two planes stumbling around in the dark? Was she telling everything she remembered, or just everything she wanted to tell?

Was Harlan McNamee behind the whole thing?

* * *

Special Agents Dwayne Wilson and Catherine Burke looked up quickly when McGee entered the bullpen, and he would be lying if that didn't make him smile a little on the inside. After so many years as the most junior on the team, being the senior field agent was a nice change.

"McGee!"

Except when Gibbs was around. Which was pretty much all the time. "Yeah, Boss?"

The supervisory field agent gave him an exasperated look. "What took so long?"

"Actually, Boss, I have no idea…" McGee's voice trailed off at the look on Gibbs' face. So, it was going to be one of those days. Actually, every day in the last four weeks had been one of those days. "Won't happen again, Boss," he said, sliding into the chair he was still getting used to as being his.

"Wilson," Gibbs barked, taking a sip of his coffee as he turned to the agent sitting in the chair McGee would probably always think of as Ziva's.

"Lt. Marco Antonellis," Wilson said, more for McGee's benefit and to catch him up to the conversation than anything else. "Single, never married, no kids. Thirty-one years old, joined the Marine Corps two years ago and went through OCS at Quantico. After flight training and Hornet training, he was assigned to Fighter Attack Squadron 251 out of Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. That was seven months ago."

"What'd he do before he joined the Corps?" McGee asked.

"Bachelor's in Professional Flight Technology and Master's in Aviation Technology, both at Purdue University," Wilson informed him. "He worked for Boeing between graduating and joining the Marine Corps. No criminal record, no reports of any problems."

"And Captain McNamee?" Gibbs asked. This time, it was Burke who spoke.

"She's been part of Squadron 251 for a little more than three years," the probie said, her voice as always reluctant and unsure. It had been a month since she joined the team, and honestly, McGee was surprised she had lasted this long. Every day, he expected to show up at work and see her desk cleared. "She was commissioned in the Marine Corps after NROTC at," she frowned and checked her computer screen again, but McGee was faster.

"Johns Hopkins," he informed her.

"Right," the probie replied, her fair cheeks pinking. "She majored in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, then was assigned to an engineering company somewhere—"

"Where?" Gibbs asked, sounding resigned to her incompetence.

"Umm," Burke murmured. Gibbs gave an exasperated look and turned to McGee, who had already brought up McNamee's officer jacket.

"Camp Lejeune," he informed the supervisory field agent. "Then it was to MIT for a Master's in Aeronautic and Astronautic Engineering before she went to flight school. Graduated at the top of her class and was selected for the F-18. She's been with 251 since."

"Disciplinary actions?"

McGee brought up that part of her file and shook his head. "No action," he reported. "A couple of complaints—disrespect to a superior officer, reckless flying—but nothing official." He frowned as he continued reading the file. "There were two requests to leave the squadron after she joined. Both were turned down by the squadron leader."

"Names?"

"Captain Robert Rose and Major Nicholas Hales. Rose is still with the squadron. Hales has since been transferred to Yuma."

"Gonna want to talk to Captain Rose. And the squadron leader."

"I'll set that up, Boss." He went back to McNamee's file and quickly scanned the remaining sections, not able to get over the feeling that he was reading about a stranger, about someone he had never met.

It had been twelve years, and she had been eighteen. No wonder she seemed like a different person: she was. He would hate to think that people who knew him when he was eighteen still thought they knew him.

"You," Gibbs barked, pointing at Wilson, "find Antonellis' autopsy report and get it to Ducky. You," he turned to Burke and frowned, turning to McGee before giving her an assignment. "McGee, find out what Abby needs and get it to her." He turned to leave, but his senior field agent stopped him.

"Gibbs," McGee called out. Gibbs turned and simultaneously raised his eyebrows as he raised his coffee cup to his lips. "Uh, do you think we should call Agent Tomblin and get her opinion on the case?"

Gibbs continued to stare at him for a long minute. "She's got a boyfriend, McGee," he finally said. McGee felt his face flushing.

"I know, Boss, I, uh, just—." He cut himself off. _Use your words, Tim_, he instructed himself. "They were close to Pakistan and Iran when the crash happened, and Harley—uh, Captain McNamee—said that she had a total electrical failure. I don't know of any weapon that can be used to selectively knock out electronics in a fighter jet, but—"

"Tomblin's not a weapons expert, McGee."

"No, but she is a Middle East expert. Actually, Boss, she's _the_ Middle East expert. This could fall into that." He shrugged. "Can't hurt to ask if she knows of anything."

Gibbs stared at him for another minute before turning to head out of the bullpen. "Your call, McGee," he said as he walked away.

McGee's eyes fell on Burke, still staring after Gibbs, her eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears, her chin beginning to shake as she tried to keep from crying, and McGee again sighed inwardly. _If you can't handle it, you might as well leave_, he thought to himself, immediately before wondering when he became so uncaring about such things. A few years ago, he would have gone out of his way to figure out what was going on and how to make it better.

But that was before he was Gibbs' senior field agent. He could barely figure out how to take care of himself. He couldn't handle another person right now, even though he knew that, as the senior field agent, that was his job.

Burke took a deep and shaky breath before turning to McGee. "Tim," she asked, her voice small. "What do you want me to be working on?"

He was tempted to just tell her to figure out, but he knew that she probably wouldn't be able to handle that. "Go to the Middle East division and ask what kind of chatter they've heard," he finally said. It was pretty much exactly what he'd be talking to Tomblin about, but at least it would keep her busy, and it couldn't hurt to have two people looking into it.

At this, point, though, he wasn't sure if having a hundred people looking into it was going to make a difference. He had no idea what they were looking for.

Maybe Abby would be able to help with that.


	9. Chapter 9

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 9**

_A/N: I meant to post this earlier... sorry about the wait. As always, thanks for reading and reviewing! For those of you who asked when our happy Bahrain-based couple makes a reappearance, the answer is, next chapter :)_

_

* * *

_

Tim McGee could probably count on one hand the number of times he had walked into Abby Sciuto's lab—Labby—and not heard some sort of loud and discordant music in the background, but he was adding that day to the list. "Hey, Abby," he greeted cautiously, not sure of what kind of mood he would find the forensic scientist in.

"McGee!" she exclaimed, shuffling over in her tall platform boots to give him a tight embrace and catching him completely off-guard. _So much for the bad mood theory_, he mused to himself.

"Uh, Abby?" he wheezed when the hug had lightened up after almost a full minute. "It's hard to breathe."

"Right," she replied with an emphatic nod, releasing him. "By the way, there's one of those muffins that you like on my desk."

"Thanks," he said sincerely, making a mental note to retrieve it before heading back upstairs. Even though Abby always broke the 'no food or drink in Labby' rule with her Caff-Pows and various snacks—and tolerated it when it came to Gibbs and his coffee, because nobody, not even Abby Sciuto, came between Gibbs and his coffee—the consequences of others doing so would be dire. Besides, he should probably save the muffin for some point in the middle of the night when he was still working on the case and all places to get food—real food, not candy bars and whatever else those were in the vending machine—were closed. He made another mental note, this time to thank Abby the next day for the midnight snack that kept him going on the case.

McGee had always had what he now realized was an irrational jealousy—he hadn't thought of it as so irrational when he and Abby were dating, though—of Abby's relationship with DiNozzo, but now he was beginning to suspect that it was Abby's way of giving her respect to Gibbs' senior field agent. Or offering her sympathy to Gibbs' senior field agent. The snacks, the offers to let him crash in the lab or hide there from Gibbs, the inside jokes, the preferential treatment, and everything else that once annoyed him, he was now the beneficiary of. As he was now sure Stan Burley was more than a decade before, when he was Gibbs' senior field agent.

Odd, that years after their short-lived relationship ended, McGee's relationship with Abby was closer than he ever would have imagined.

"So are you here for a reason, or is Gibbs on one of his rampages again?" Abby asked cheerfully. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, Timmy. I am. Really. But you just got started on a case, and usually when you just get started on a case, you're upstairs writing a new computer program, and you're down here instead of up there, so I figured—"

"Gibbs sent me down to see if there's anything you need," McGee interrupted, knowing that letting Abby continue could result in a long monolog of her entire thought process, which usually ended with something completely unrelated, such as how many Caff-Pows she had had so far that morning.

"Aww," Abby crooned, her hands going over her chest and her eyes going wide. "That is _so_ sweet of him!" As soon as the characteristic over-reaction was over, she was back down to business. "The planes went down in the Indian Ocean," she said as if he didn't know that, heading back over to whatever she had been working on at her computer, "so we don't have a lot of physical evidence. I mean, it's not like they're going to be dragging the Indian Ocean for some waterlogged planes for me to look at. And even if they did, it's not like there'd be much left that would tell me much of anything, not with the salt water and the fish and -"

"Abby."

"Sorry. What we do have is the recordings from the squadron's exercise," she said, returning her attention to her computer and the digital sound waves displayed there.

"Anything interesting?"

"Well, I've learned a few things," Abby said to him. "Marine pilots talk to each other a lot while they're flying. I mean, _a lot_. At first I thought they'd be talking about flying-type stuff, you know, since they were flying, but they don't. Mostly they just make fun of each other. Listen to this—"

"Abby," McGee interrupted. "Is it relevant?"

She pouted her bright red lips at him. "You used to be a lot more fun."

"I used to have a lot more time, too."

"Good point. Okay, so I tagged everyone's voices. Captain McNamee—her call sign is 'Angel', by the way, wonder what that story is—is pretty easy to figure out, since she's the only woman, but some of the guys were a bit more difficult to tell apart. I had to use—." She cut herself off. "Never mind. I'll get to the point. According to her report, Captain McNamee lost her electronics, so I was hoping there would be something on the recording that could help me figure out how that happened. Anyway, here's what I've got." She found the right place in the recording and hit play, and McGee finally figured out why there wasn't any music playing overhead: she had been listening to the nuances of sound recordings all morning.

_"Well, it wouldn't be so fucking bad, except she's starting to hint that she wants another kid,"_ a man's voice said.

"That's Iceman," Abby informed McGee as she paused it. "Like Val Kilmer in _Top Gun_."

"Tony would be quoting that movie the rest of the case," McGee mused.

"I'm surprised he hasn't picked up on it from Bahrain," Abby replied. "How is he, anyway? Last time I talked to him, he sounded really tired and overworked—"

"I'm sure you've talked to him a lot more over the last four weeks than I have," McGee interrupted.

"I'm sure it'll be better now that Ziva's back with him," Abby said decisively. "Back to the strangest radio reality show ever. Maybe if I started listening at the beginning of the series instead of starting with this episode—"

"Abby."

"Right. Sorry." She hit play again, and the voices and static of the radio returned.

_"The more the merrier, right, Elder?"_

"That's Stack," Abby informed McGee. "I wonder how these guys got their call signs. I mean, I know the squadron usually picks them out—"

"Abby, I don't want to miss anything," McGee interrupted.

_"The more you have, the harder it is to leave them behind every few months."_

"That was Elder," Abby said.

_"It seems kinda like the opposite,"_ a woman's voice said into the radio. Even with the distortion, it wasn't hard to figure out that that was Harlan McNamee. _"Isn't it that the more you have, the more you—"_ Her words stopped abruptly. There were a few seconds of speechlessness before the other pilots began speaking again.

_"Angel?"_ one of the men asked. _"What the fuck? You stop talking in midsentence now? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for you not talking—"_

_ "Iceman, shut the fuck up. Something's up."_ Even through the recording, McGee could feel the instant change from the light mood that had been present only seconds before. _"She's running without lights."_

_"Angel, report,"_ an authoritative voice commanded. Nothing.

_"Holy shit! What the fuck?"_ a man's voice yelled into the radio.

_"John Deere, report!"_

_"She's fucking flying right over me! Wait. She's telling me something."_ There was a pause. _"What the fuck? She just said she's running without power."_

Abby paused the recording again. "That goes on for a while," she said. "The squadron leader tells them to go back to the carrier. He stays in communication with them and the carrier while he begins to escort Angel back. We'll listen to that next. What I wanted you to hear was this." She went back to when Harley was speaking. "There was a ding right here. Maybe not so much a ding as a blip or a click or a clack or a dook, but it's definitely something hinky."

"I didn't hear anything," McGee commented with a frown.

"Well, yeah. That's because it was behind the radio noise and the oxygen noise and all the other white noise. But then I took those out, and this is what I got." She made the adjustments and played it again, and this time, he heard what she was talking about; like her, he had no idea how to describe it, but it didn't sound like something that was supposed to be there.

"What is it?" he asked, earning an exaggerated shrug.

"I have no idea," she admitted. "I've run it through a few databases, and nothing matches."

He frowned, trying to figure out where this new piece of information fit into everything else he knew. There was still one question that was gnawing at his gut. "What could cause a total electrical failure in an F-18?" he mused aloud.

"Without the plane, I wouldn't know what to tell you," Abby replied. "But you might find this interesting." She went back to the computer and found another place in the flight recordings that she had marked. "Like I said, the squadron leader—Everest, is his call sign—remained in communication with the rest of the squadron and the carrier as he was escorting Captain McNamee toward Kuwait, until right here."

_"We're going to have to wait until Maintenance gets a chance to look at Angel's plane at Kuwait before we can—Guido? Lieutenant, what the fuck are you doing? Report!"_

McGee waited for what came next, but nothing came. "Then what?"

"That's it," Abby replied. "We didn't hear anything else from Everest on the recording."

McGee frowned. "Wait a second," he said after a few seconds. "He wouldn't just stop recording. That sound from Harley's plane when her power went out… Is there any chance of finding that on Everest's recording?"

"It can't hurt to check," Abby said cheerfully. She made the same adjustments to the recording that she had made before, again turning up the volume. "Right there!" she said victoriously. "It's the same sound!"

"So whatever happened to one plane happened to both," McGee said, more to himself than her. "Is there any sort of weapon that can do that?"

"I've been reading about some developmental weapon systems," Abby replied thoughtfully. "It's mostly still theoretical, but from what I've been reading, a targeted electromagnetic pulse might be able to do that."

"But how could you have an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out only one plane at a time? If it was something from Iran, or from a ship in the ocean, wouldn't it have taken out the entire squadron?"

"Like I said, it's mostly just theoretical," Abby replied, "so I don't know how it would work. Or even if it would work, but maybe if it's from something close enough, like another plane—"

"Someone would have said something about another plane on that," McGee pointed out, indicating the flight recordings.

"If we're thinking something hinky is going on, which we are because two electrical systems don't just go out by coincidence and we wouldn't have been called in if it wasn't something hinky, then I guess that leaves sabotage."

"Or a plane that didn't look out of place," McGee mused, barely listening to Abby. "Guido—I guess that's Lt. Antonellis—was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. Maybe he had some sort of weapon…" His voice trailed off as he thought about the implications, finally turning to look at Abby. "So it was either one of their fellow pilots pointing a theoretical weapon at individual planes, or it was someone who has access to the electrical systems of the planes."

"Either way, that doesn't look too good."

"No," McGee agreed. "It means we're looking for someone on the inside."


	10. Chapter 10

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 10**

_A/N: Writing has been really slow on this one (in case you can't tell from the slower-than-normal posting schedule). I'm definitely open to suggestions, so if you have any, send them my way. And if you don't, I hope you continue to enjoy the story!_

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NCIS Special Agent Kim Tomblin hated hospitals. She was fortunate enough not to have spent too much time in them as a patient—her longest stay was when she was shot in the arm when she was a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, and even then, it was only a week in the field hospital in Iraq—but there was still something about the sterile atmosphere and scent in the air that made her skin crawl.

Even the bright and sunny Bob Wilson Naval Hospital in San Diego—more commonly known as Balboa—which was, overall, a hospital she had happy memories associated with, including a few visits to a Dr. Jeff Cunningham while she was escorting patients in NCIS custody.

This time, though, while she was there to see Jeff, it wasn't for a surprise visit to his office when he didn't realize she was in town. This time, Jeff was the patient, and she was the 'family member' waiting for him to be out of surgery. And she hated waiting more than she hated hospitals.

She sighed as she leaned against one of the many large picture windows showing off Balboa's prime beach real estate, not even seeing the blue-green Pacific Ocean or bright blue sky or clear uncrowded beach, not registering the perfect surf that just begged for her and her surfboard. Well, Jeff's surfboard; she still hadn't gotten around to going and buying one for herself, not with an unused board just lying around on account of the fact that its owner was far too injured to be out surfing.

She hated this. It had been a month, a month of Jeff spending as much time in the hospital as out—as a patient, not a doctor, a distinction that he was significantly less than pleased about—a month of surfing and sun and without the company she usually enjoyed when she was surfing and sunbathing.

Tomblin pulled Jeff's pager from her pocket and checked it again, confirming that she hadn't missed any pages. That was definitely a nice thing about being the 'family member' to a well-liked doctor at the hospital—the orthopedic surgeons had promised to keep her in the loop and said that they would let her know the minute the surgery was over, which would probably still be a few hours. But that still left her sitting around the hospital for a few hours.

She finally pulled away from the window and made a decision; standing around doing nothing wasn't her style, she needed something to do or someone to see, and everyone she knew at the hospital was in the pediatrics department, where Jeff worked.

Unfortunately, they were all doing what the majority of productive members of society were doing during the day—working.

She collapsed into Jeff's chair in the empty office he usually shared with the other two pediatric infectious disease fellows, and took a moment to just sit and try to catch her breath and collect her thoughts.

Easier said than done, especially considering that her new position at NCIS—Special Agent in Charge of Investigations Involving International Terrorism, a position with a long title and vague description—required her to follow Gibbs' Rule Three to the letter: always be accessible. She had barely settled into the chair when her phone started ringing. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she muttered, sure that it was that agent from Homeland Security who hadn't seemed to get the hint that she wasn't interested.

And then she saw the caller ID, and her heart just about stopped in surprise: Stan Burley (work).

It took her a few seconds to register that her late boss' number, while no longer his, was still active. "DiNozzo," she said, forcing a light tone as she mentally told herself that it was time to change her contacts to reflect the change. "Middle East falling apart without me already?"

_"Not this time,"_ the new SAC in Bahrain replied, his voice telling her that this wasn't a social call and he wasn't amused, and a glance at her watch telling her why: at eleven hours ahead, if he was calling from his office at that hour, something big had happened. _"But I did lose a captain."_

"Please tell me you're talking about a Marine, because if you lost a Navy captain—"

_"I couldn't be so lucky. I need to know everything about Abdul Hasan Zazi."_

It took her a second to recall the Taliban officer she had worked with David Cohen and a Marine Recon team to capture almost nine months before, but she couldn't figure out what that had to do with Navy captains. "I don't think I'm following, DiNozzo."

_"Captain Rabb is the JAG who's supposed to be prosecuting."_

"And that's who you lost?" As the words were coming out of her mouth, the office door opened again, revealing a brunette Navy lieutenant with a long white coat over her khaki uniform and a puzzled expression on her face. Tomblin gave her a tight smile. "I can't talk about it right now, DiNozzo. I'm on an unsecured cell phone in Jeff's office—"

_"You aren't at work?"_

"Took a day of sick leave. Jeff's in surgery right now." She closed her eyes and sighed; this was seriously the last thing she needed. "Listen, DiNozzo, there's an NCIS office here in the hospital, and I'm sure the agent has a secured webcam. Give me half an hour to get there and convince him to let me kick him out of his office, and then I'll contact you on the network."

_"Talk to you in half an hour, then."_ She frowned at the beeping sound indicating that the call was disconnected; she was having flashbacks to times working with Agent Gibbs.

She forced a smile on her face as she again turned to the doorway, where Dr. Davis was still watching her with a confused look. "You must be Laurel," Tomblin finally said.

"Yeah," Dr. Laurel Davis replied slowly. "And you are…"

Tomblin smiled inwardly at the thought of pulling out her credentials. _NCIS, I have a couple of questions for you regarding your officemate._ "Kim Tomblin," she said instead, and almost instantly, recognition crossed Dr. Davis' face.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Jeff's Kim." Her eyes, and then Tomblin's, went to the framed photographs on Jeff's desk; next to the picture of the pediatrician in his summer whites and surrounded by his red-headed niece and nephews—seriously, Mandy, up to three kids already? Kim could still remember when the eldest was born, when her and Jeff were deployed to Iraq—were two pictures of Jeff and Kim together, one in Qatar during R&R leave and one when he surprised her by being there when the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ came to dock, during her year as agent afloat aboard the carrier. "So he's in surgery today?" the pediatric infectious disease fellow continued.

"Yeah," Tomblin replied. "I think the orthopedic surgeons said that they're doing a revision on the hardware in his leg."

"Nobody ever knows what orthopedic surgeons are saying," Dr. Davis said dismissively. "When is he supposed to be done?"

"They actually didn't know," Tomblin informed her. She held up the work BlackBerry. "I'm sorry to duck out, but—"

"Work," Davis said with a slight smile. "I know that feeling. Good luck. And let me know when Jeff gets out of surgery, so I can stop by and say hi." Tomblin agreed before gathering her few things and heading out.

Apparently, when your work was terrorism, you were never off the clock.

* * *

True to Kim Tomblin's military training and precision, exactly thirty minutes had passed when a pop-up appeared on DiNozzo's desktop, indicating a new call on the secured network. "Tomblin," he said in surprise when the agent appeared, "you look like hell."

_"It's a good thing you already have a girlfriend, DiNozzo, because with sweet talk like that, you'd never be able to pick one up."_ Despite her light tone, Tomblin did look pretty beat. Her long hair was in its standard ponytail, but her face looked thinner than it had a month before, dark circles etched under her eyes and a pallor to her skin that shouldn't have been present on someone in San Diego. _"It's been a hell of a week," _she admitted. _"My grandfather had a heart attack and is in the VA in Spokane, but I can't be there because I'm here because Jeff's having surgery again today, and to top it off, there was a major bomb threat at Pendleton on Monday that required my physical and awake presence for forty-seven hours." _She sighed and rubbed her eyes. _"I'm too old for this shit, DiNozzo."_

"How do you think I feel?" he shot back. "How's Cunningham?"

_"Be a hell of lot better when he's walking again,"_ she replied. _"He gets a little stir-crazy and he's not dealing with inactivity well. And he's pissed because this is the first year, with the exception of his time deployed, since he was at Annapolis that he's not running the Marine Corps Marathon."_ She shrugged a shoulder. _"Upside to that is that I get to take his place. I didn't register because I thought I'd still be in Bahrain. We have a team from the good old days that runs every year to raise money. It'll be good to see them again."_ She paused for a second. _"Speaking of which, do you want to donate to my marathon to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project?"_

"Only if you can tell me something I can use about Zazi."

Tomblin frowned again. _"Well, that's not fair to the wounded vets,"_ she finally said. _"To be honest, it was a fairly small op nine months ago."_

"I'll take anything I can get."

_"Okay."_ She took a deep breath. _"A fighter squadron flying over Waziristan about a year ago noticed something a bit out of the ordinary. They sent it up the chain and a satellite got dedicated to the region, which pretty much confirmed that someone was up to something. A Recon team operating in the region was sent in to do what Recon does best—reconnaissance—and got a lead on who they believed was Zazi. Since he was on our watch list and we were involved since the satellite got involved and the captain of the Recon team is a friend of mine, he gave me a call. I went out to run point and question Zazi after they brought him in. He didn't talk, and the rules of engagement that are designed to tie our hands and make us look like bumbling idiots state that I can't do anything to change that, so I escorted him to the nearest detainment center. That was it."_

"Who was the Recon captain, and how do I talk to him?"

_"Name's Captain Chris Hammer. He's actually back at Pendleton right now. I can bring him into NCIS for a video conference."_ She gave an amused smile. _"You might want to remove any shiny objects from your office first, though. He's got the worst ADHD you've ever seen. I still don't know how he manages to remain functional, much less lead a Recon unit."_

DiNozzo wondered the same thing, but wasn't in a mood to joke about it. "What'd you charge Zazi with?"

_"The usual. War crimes."_

"Defense have anything they can use to fight that?"

Tomblin shrugged. _"The usual," _she echoed. _"Nobody ever saw him doing any of the things you claim he did, he's just a man who cares about his village, et cetera, et cetera. If you think the defense strategy involves keeping the prosecutor from the court room, you should probably be talking to the JAG who'll be defending, not me. But if that's the case, you probably have more issues than just Zazi."_

DiNozzo knew she was right about that one. "Where does Mossad fit into all of this?"

She shrugged again. _"Hell if I know. Something dinged in the Mossad 'I have eyes everywhere' alert and Cohen offered his assistance. I thought he was offering assistance in eliminating the Zazi problem permanently, but when I started with the rules of engagement shit, he said it wasn't an issue. And, of course, I trust Cohen to keep his word about not killing someone about as far as I can throw him—which is probably further than you think—but he followed the rules. He ran point with the boys and helped bring in Zazi and never touched him. And that was it. He never brought it up again." _

"What would Mossad want with Zazi?"

_"Other than the whole Mossad stance on bringing down all enemies of Israel?"_ Tomblin asked wryly. _"I'm guessing you're a lot closer to a Mossad officer who can answer those questions than I am. They say the key to building strong relationships is communication."_

A reminder DiNozzo did not need. "Not when the two people in a relationships are officials of two different countries. Then the lines of communication get a little blurry."


	11. Chapter 11

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 11**

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The sounds of loud snores greeted Tony DiNozzo as he entered the one-bedroom apartment that had been his home for the last month, and for as much as that sound once drove him nuts and kept him from getting any sleep, it was probably the most welcome thing he had heard in a long time.

A lot more welcome that the reaction of Mrs. Rabb when he called and informed her that he lost her husband. Now he knew why he always had always delegated that responsibility to Ziva or the McGoo.

He tried to be quiet as he brushed his teeth and got ready for bed; he didn't know if he was out of practice after the month of being a bachelor again, or if it was just how light of a sleeper Ziva was, but the snores were conspicuously absent by the time he stumbled into the bedroom. "What time is it?" Ziva murmured as he slipped under the covers.

"Zero-three," he replied. "Sorry to wake you." Ziva sighed as she shifted positions.

"It is late," she stated, still sounding half-asleep. He chuckled wryly and kissed the top of her head.

"Late, early, all a matter of perspective. Your alarm is set to go off in two hours."

"This is true. Did you find Captain Rabb?"

DiNozzo snorted. "Right," he said sarcastically. He sighed and rolled over onto his back. "Last thing I did before leaving the office was call his wife and tell her that he was missing. Conversation violated rule thirteen."

Ziva frowned at the reference to Gibbs' rules as she tried to remember what the thirteenth rule was. "Always work as a team?" she finally guessed.

"Never, ever involve a lawyer," DiNozzo corrected. Ziva's frown deepened. "Rabb's wife's a lawyer. Former Marine JAG. As if the case hasn't involved a lawyer from the very beginning."

Ziva ran her hand along Tony's jaw, feeling the stubble of almost a full day's growth, before rolling over and kissing right below where his jaw met his ear. "You will find him," she said confidently. He snorted.

"I hope so," he said wryly, before sighing again. "On the job on a month, and I've already lost a captain. How long do you think it was before Gibbs made a fatal mistake?"

"Knowing Gibbs, it was probably a week," Ziva replied. "You will find him," she repeated. "You must believe that."

"And even if I do, you honestly think Vance'll keep me here? I sent a junior analyst to pick up a captain. I let two hours go by—"

"You _delegated_," Ziva interrupted. Sometimes, she just got tired of Tony's periods of self-doubt and second-guessing himself, and being tired and jetlagged from flying across the globe just lowered her threshold even further. "That is what a good leader does. Gibbs did not do everything himself. How many times did he delegate important tasks to one of us or McGee?"

"Yeah," Tony sighed after a pause. Ziva sighed inwardly, knowing that her words were doing hardly anything to convince him that he, and his career, were going to be alright.

Well, if words weren't going to do anything, there were always actions.

She used her fingers to turn his head to face her, not even giving him time to think about what she was doing before she pressed her lips to his decisively. He was caught off-guard for a fraction of a second, but more than two and a half years of muscle memory didn't serve him wrong, returning the kiss before rolling her onto her back and him over top of her.

It was good to be back together.

* * *

Just as Tony predicted, Ziva's alarm went off two hours after he arrived at the apartment, earning a groan from him and quick response from her, quickly going through the steps required to turn off the cell phone alarm despite the fact that she was waking from what was essentially an hour nap. "I'm not going," Tony murmured, barely coherent as he buried his face in his pillow. Ziva couldn't help but smile; after a stressful day and only an hour of sleep, she wasn't surprised. Instead, she just gave him a quick kiss before climbing out of bed.

"I have a meeting with the realtor this morning," she said as headed toward the bathroom, not even sure if he was still awake to hear her. At least he couldn't say that she didn't tell him. "I have been looking at some places on-line, so we will see how they appear in person. Do not worry; I will not sign a lease until you have approved." Just as she expected, she received only a snore in response.

An hour and a half after she left for her run, Ziva returned to Tomblin's former apartment, just in time for Tony's alarm to be going off. "Good morning," she said cheerfully, endorphins pumping through her bloodstream after a good hard run. She got only a grunt and glare in response as Tony dramatically threw off the covers.

"It's not even morning yet," he complained.

"It is after zero-six-thirty," she replied, earning her another glare.

"Easy for you to say," he grumbled as he peeled off his OSU tee-shirt en route to the shower, Ziva's eyes following him form appreciatively. "You didn't work until zero-three and then get seduced by a beautiful Israeli woman."

"Not this time," Ziva said innocently. There were a few seconds of confusion before his eyebrows raised abruptly, then his eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

"You're doing it again," he said accusingly, resuming his trek to the bathroom. "Damn woman," he muttered under his breath.

Ziva gave him five minutes in the shower before following him in, squeezing into the tiny shower space. "Conserving water?" Tony asked with a smirk as she reached over him for the shampoo.

"Yes," she said simply, not so innocently pressing her body against his to maneuver by him to get under the shower's spray.

"I missed you, Ziva," Tony said in a serious tone, his eyes half-closed against the water. "I love you."

"I love you," she replied, rising slightly to kiss him. "And I missed you." She gave him a seductive smile. "And I believe we have lost time to make up for."

They headed back to the bedroom to get dressed after their shared shower, both mentally preparing for the events of their day. "So you're going with the realtor today to look at apartments?" Tony asked as he shrugged a shirt over his head. Ziva's eyebrows rose, impressed that he had been listening. "What neighborhoods are you looking at?"

"That part has been difficult," she admitted. "The State Department says that any apartment building that you live in must be more than half Americans."

"That doesn't make any sense," he replied. "Because any apartment I live in will only be half American."

Ziva smiled slightly at that. "There is actually a two-bedroom in this building that I will be seeing and there are a few more in this area. All of the apartments we will see today are close to base."

Tony nodded slightly. "I talked to Tomblin yesterday," he said, making her frown with the change in subject. "She doesn't know why Cohen tagged along on the mission, suggested I might know a Mossad officer who would be able to fill me in on that."

Ziva sighed; this was the same conversation they had had in the office the evening before. "I will see what can be shared with NCIS," she finally said. She frowned at his expression. "That is the best I can do, Tony. We both knew that things would change after I left NCIS."

"I know," he admitted. "I just didn't think about what exactly would change."

She gave him a tight smile and kissed him lightly. "I am not trying to impede your investigation. You must believe that."

"I do," he told her. "You should stop by the office if you get a break from apartment hunting for lunch. There's a pretty good deli in the building that we can check out."

She nodded. "I hope I will see you then," she said as he headed for the door. "Good luck, Tony."

"I feel like I'm going to need it," he said with a sigh. "Good luck to you, too. I feel like we're going to need that, too." If they weren't going to be able to work together anymore, he at least wanted a place where they could comfortably live together.


	12. Chapter 12

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 12**

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Ziva David had to fight the impulse to check her watch impatiently, the tediousness of the last few hours of looking at one apartment after another getting to her, the thoughts of breaking for lunch to spend some time with Tony—even though she knew it would be time spent with him working—the only thing that had been keeping her for the last two apartments.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the apartments had some redeeming value to them, if she could see living with Tony in a single one of the places the realtor had gushed about, but she couldn't have been so lucky. The first place had been too small, a two-bedroom that had fewer square feet than Tomblin's old apartment. The second place had tiny windows that looked right into the apartment across a tiny alley, something that wouldn't have been too much of a problem had they been in DC, but seemed a little ridiculous in Bahrain, with weather that begged for a balcony and endless beach-front properties that had them. The third one had nothing of what they were looking for, and the fourth was so unsecured that Ziva might as well put up a sign announcing her affiliation with Mossad.

"You do not seem interested," the realtor finally said in Arabic, interrupting her own monolog about the apartment's features.

"No," Ziva said bluntly.

"Perhaps if you told me what you do not like about it, it will help direct our search."

Ziva frowned as she glanced around, trying to figure out where to start. "It is not very large," she finally began. "Both bedrooms are very small, as is the living room and kitchen. I like to cook, so I would like a good kitchen, and this is not a good kitchen. Not only is it small, but the appliances are old and I do not even know what it is that these countertops are made of. Also, it is a ground unit, which is more difficult to secure and more easily broken into. I do not want to live lower than the third floor in any building. The carpet and the furniture are all old. If we will be renting a furnished apartment, this is not the furniture we would want. It would have to be more modern, or just unfurnished. The windows are small and do not have a view of the beach, despite the fact that it is half a block away. Would you like me to continue, or does that give you an idea of what it is that we are looking for?"

"I think I have an idea," the realtor said after a few long seconds of pause, clearly surprised at Ziva's rush of words after an entire morning of the Mossad agent saying barely five words in a row. "I will look at my listings over lunch," she continued. "Perhaps you would like to meet at my office at 1330?"

"Yes, that will work," Ziva replied with a nod, thankful that this apartment was close enough to base that she could walk to NCIS, thus saving her from having to ask the real estate for a ride to Tony's office. "I will meet you then."

A short walk to NSA-Bahrain later, Ziva rapped her knuckles on the open door to the NCIS field agent office, interrupting Agent Freiler's explanation about something that was probably related to the Rabb case. "Hey, sweetcheeks," Tony greeted from desk by the large picture window, straightening and lowering his feet from the desk to the floor. "Productive search?"

"No," she replied bluntly, collapsing into Tomblin's old chair. She wondered idly how long it would be before Tony managed to get a new senior field agent to fill that seat. If he didn't get on it soon, Vance was just going to send someone without his consent, and that would probably not work out well for anyone. "Am I interrupting?"

"I was just going over Rabb's officer jacket," Freiler informed her.

"Seeing if anything jumps out," Tony continued. "Could always use another set of ears." She nodded her consent and settled into Tomblin's chair, indicating for Freiler to continue.

"Uh, like I was saying, he's been stationed in London for six years, following his promotion to captain. He got married immediately before arriving in London, to former Marine lieutenant colonel Sarah MacKenzie, who resigned her commission to move with him to London. They have two children; son Elliot is ten and daughter MacKenzie is two. Uh, Elliot was adopted five years ago. He's a distant cousin of Rabb's half-brother in Russia, and Rabb and his wife stepped in to take care of him after his parents died in a car accident. Rabb—"

"Wait," Tony interrupted. The issue of where he knew Rabb from had been bugging him since he heard the name, and this was beginning to sound familiar. "Rabb has a half-brother in Russia?"

"Uh, yeah," Freiler replied, glancing down at the file on his desk. "Sergei Zhukov. Former sergeant in the Russian army."

"That's where I know Rabb from," DiNozzo announced, smacking his hand against the table in his excitement, hard enough to make it sting. He registered the confused looks on both Freiler's and Ziva's faces as he shook out his hand. "It was about a year after I joined NCIS. The body of a missing JAG turned up, turned out she was pregnant. She had previously dated Zhukov, Gibbs arrested Rabb for murder, thought the kid was Zhukov's and Rabb was protecting his brother."

"So how is he now a captain?" Ziva asked with a frown.

"He didn't do it," DiNozzo informed her. "It was the kid's father, but that wasn't Zhukov." Ziva nodded her understanding. "I doubt it has anything to do with where he is right now, though. Freiler, when we're done here, get me Zhukov's contact information, just to make sure his brother didn't take a side trip to Russia on his way down here and got lost."

"Got it," Freiler agreed, making a note of the assignment on his ledger. "Uh, do you want me to continue?" Tony waved for him to go on. "No blemishes in his record since he arrived in London," the junior field agent informed them. "He's presided over a few big cases in EUCOM, a few murders and the like, but nothing overly political."

"And his wife? She's a lawyer, too, right?"

"Right. Uh, she's a partner in the international division at Lord, Hendersen, and Layne. It's a civilian law firm in London. I don't have any information about what kinds of cases she's been working."

"And she's not going to tell us, either," DiNozzo commented in disgust. He had definitely inherited Gibbs' distaste of lawyers, and that one, he wasn't afraid to admit. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. I'll call Zhukov and talk to him. Freiler, you're now in charge of keeping Mrs. Rabb up to date, every twelve hours until we have Rabb back. Be thankful they've got two kids keeping her in London; she said if it weren't for them, she'd be on the first flight down here to 'help' our investigation. Ziva, you're coming with me to the deli to tell me about the apartments you saw today." He had said that last sentence with the same commanding tone as the ones that came before, causing Ziva to take a few seconds before she realized that it had nothing to do with the case. Actually a bit surprised that he wasn't pressing her for more information about Mossad's involvement on the capture of Zazi—yet—she rose from Tomblin's old chair and followed him to the door without saying anything.

Freiler had a packed lunch out on his desk and Sergei Zhukov's contact information for Tony when they returned from the building's deli, sandwiches in hand. "Thanks," Tony said, indicating the slip of paper. He returned to his chair and unwrapped his cold cut trio before turning to Ziva. "So. Apartments."

She made a face as she, too, unwrapped her sandwiches. "At this rate, we should probably get comfortable in Tomblin's old place. It was preferable to anything that I have seen so far today."

"You're being too picky."

"And you are not being picky enough," Ziva shot back. "We will likely be living there for at least three years. Do you not think we should find a place that meets all of our qualifications for those three years?"

"Sweetcheeks, there isn't an apartment on earth that meets all of your qualifications."

"And yet I managed to find a place that was satisfactory in DC."

Tony looked at her, aghast. "You lived in Silver Spring!" he exclaimed. "And not the good part of Silver Spring. You were living in the closest thing Montgomery County, Maryland has to a ghetto!"

"And yet it was more easily secured than any of the places I have seen so far in Bahrain."

He shook his head at that, clearly at a loss for what to say. "Freiler, tell her she's being unreasonable," he finally said, turning toward his junior agent.

"Huh?" Freiler asked, momentarily confused. "Oh, no," he continued, catching on. "I'm staying out of this one."

"You have a lot to learn, young grasshopper," DiNozzo said to him, shaking his head sadly. "Such as how to back up your boss. If Gibbs had ever asked my opinion on an argument between him and whoever he was dating—"

"Gibbs would never ask your opinion," Ziva interrupted, taking another bite of her sandwich. Tony was right; the deli was pretty good. "He had far too much sense for that."

"Funny. Just so you know, Freiler, your job description includes agreeing with me. About everything."

"Do not listen to him," Ziva instructed the younger man. She turned to Tony. "And you do not try to convince him that you are being serious."

"I _am_ being serious."

Ziva rolled her eyes, taking the last bite of her sandwich. She glanced at her watch. "I should go upstairs and check in before returning to the realtor's office," she said reluctantly. She caught the look on Tony's face and frowned. "And no, I will not be pressing Cohen for more information," she said forcibly.

"Delaying could be putting Rabb in danger," Tony pointed out.

Ziva switched to Hebrew before replying. "Do not try to force my hand," she snapped. Neither broke eye contact for a long minute, before she leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. "I will see you back in the apartment tonight," she said.

He nodded slightly before giving her a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Good luck," he said. "As much as I'm enjoying Tomblin's apartment now that you're here, I don't know if I can stand to live there for the next three years."


	13. Chapter 13

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 13**

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The ringing of her BlackBerry woke Special Agent Kim Tomblin from a very strange dream involving killer teddy bears and orthopedic surgeons sending texts about said killer teddy bears. She groaned as she began rooting for the phone, realizing that this was the first she had woken from the 'quick nap' she decided to take on the couch four hours before. "Tomblin," she said, picking up the offending device. It rang again, making her groan, pull it away from her ear, and try again to press the button to accept the call. "Tomblin," she repeated.

_"Hey, Kim, it's Tim McGee."_ She barely avoided groaning again. She had nothing against the new senior field agent at NCIS headquarters, she just wasn't in the mood to be thinking about work. At this point, she didn't ever want to think about work again.

"Hey, McGee," she said instead. "What time is it?" She meant to just think the question.

There was a pause on the other end. _"Uh, it's 2000, your time."_

"Okay. Thanks." She pushed her hair back with her free hand and told herself to focus on the call. She was about to ask what he needed, but she had barely formed the question in her mind when McGee spoke again.

_"Are you okay, Kim?"_

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said dismissively. "I was just taking a nap." It was the first uninterrupted four hours of sleep she had had in the last two weeks, but McGee didn't need to know that. "What's up?"

_"You were taking a nap at eight pm?"_ So much for getting down to work.

"Actually, I took a nap at four, when I got back from the hospital. I just didn't wake up until eight."

_"Is Cunningham okay?"_ She was actually kinda impressed that he made that connection so quickly.

"He had surgery again today," she informed him. "Everything went well, but they decided to keep him overnight in the hospital, just to be safe or whatever. He didn't want me to stay, said at least one of us should get some sleep while he's hospitalized." For as much as Jeff loved his job, he hated the hospital and said that nobody should be there unless they absolutely had to be. "But I know you didn't call me at a time when _you_ should be sleeping to talk about Jeff."

_"We have a case that might be up your alley."_

This time, she did groan audibly. "You don't expect me to come out there, do you?"

_"No, nothing like that,"_ McGee said quickly. _"I just needed your opinion."_

"I think I can spare one of those. I have plenty to go around, as everyone keeps telling me. Shoot."

_"We had two Marine fighter pilots go down in the Indian Ocean a couple days ago. One died, one's hospitalized at Bethesda. The pilot who made it said she had an electrical failure in her plane before the crash. They weren't too far from Iran and Pakistan when they went down. We—actually, just I, Gibbs doesn't seem to think there's any possibility of it—uh, we were wondering if you knew of any weapon that either country that had—"_

"That can knock out the electronics of a fighter jet miles off their shore?" Tomblin interrupted. She wondered if that sounded as ridiculous to McGee as it did to her. "As far as I know, McGee, _we_ don't have anything that can do that. What makes you think that Iran or Pakistan does?"

There was a pause on the other end as McGee considered that. _"I guess I don't, really,"_ he admitted. _"I just hoped it would be that easy."_

A chuckle escaped Tomblin's lips. "Easy for you, maybe. Be hell for me." The last thing she needed was to have a such a major case to deal with, not with both Jeff and her grandfather in hospitals in two different states. "Guess it's just not a good week for fighter pilots."

Her words were met with confusion on the other end. _"Did another plane crash somewhere?"_

"No, not as far as I know," Tomblin replied. "DiNozzo called me about a case. He lost a JAG who's supposed to be prosecuting a case I worked. The lawyer used to be a fighter pilot. I don't know why I just thought about that. I'm sure it's just a coincidence."

As soon as the word was out of her mouth, she remembered from her own brief time working with Gibbs that 'coincidence' was practically code word for 'conspiracy'. _"Do I need to remind you what Gibbs thinks of coincidences?"_ McGee asked, obviously thinking the same thing.

"How could they be related?" Tomblin argued. "You said it, your pilot went down in the Indian Ocean. Mine disappeared somewhere between London and Bahrain, where he was supposed to be stopping for a quick stay before going on to Afghanistan. Mine's a former Navy Tomcat pilot, yours is a Marine, uh—"

_"Hornet,"_ McGee filled in.

"Okay, Hornet pilot. Really? A female Marine Hornet pilot?"

_"Why does everyone have such a hard time believing that? You were a female Marine MP."_

"Well, yeah, but the Corps isn't exactly progressive when it comes to putting women in positions of combat, and that's pretty much the definition of a Hornet pilot. I knew the Corps had female backseaters, but I wasn't even sure if they had fighter pilots."

_"Well, they have at least one."_

"Assuming someone isn't trying to take her out. I'm guessing she didn't always get along with all the other pilots?"

_"How'd you know?"_

"You said it, McGee. I was an MP. A really short, half-Japanese, female MP in the United States Marine Corps." Back when she was in uniform, she had to deal with the jokes and looks of disbelief on a regular basis. Fortunately for her, she was actually very qualified for her job; last she checked, she still had a record at the range at Camp Pendleton. She also wasn't afraid to show people just how good she was at her position. To become a fighter pilot as a woman in the Marine Corps, she was betting the same could be said for McGee's pilot, and trying to prove oneself while in the cockpit of a billion dollar plane going very fast could be very dangerous. "Are you sure there's even something criminal involved?" Tomblin asked. "I've never talked to your pilot, obviously, but is there any chance she could be making up the electrical failure to cover up pilot error?"

There was a long pause on the other end. _"I doubt it,"_ he finally said. _"But we're going to be talking to the squadron leader, see what he thinks about whole thing."_

"And I'm guessing you don't have the plane."

_"It's somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean."_

"Yeah. That sucks."

_"Yeah."_ They lapsed into silence again before McGee continued. _"Well, I didn't really expect that you would know of a terrorist organization with a weapon that could knock out the electronics on a Hornet—"_

"Unfortunately, as much as we'd like to, we can't blame everything on the terrorists."

_"Yeah."_ McGee paused again. _"I know you don't think that the two cases have anything to do with each other—"_

"First you try to pass your case off to me, now you're trying to hand it over to DiNozzo? Shit, McGee, work your own cases."

_"I was just going to say, make sure you keep me in the loop if it starts to look like the two might be connected."_

"Of course," she replied with a sigh. "I just can't imagine a conspiracy that manages to cover a JAG who's supposed to be prosecuting a case involving a war criminal in Afghanistan and a squadron of Marine fighter pilots playing in the Indian Ocean."

_"It does seem a little far-fetched."_

"A little bit beyond far-fetched, McGee." She sighed again; she really didn't need this. She needed the terrorists to realize that she was busy and couldn't come out and play. "I'm taking the Recon captain who caught the guy Captain Rabb is prosecuting to work tomorrow morning to videoconference with DiNozzo, see if maybe he remembers something that'll help us find Rabb." She didn't say it to McGee, but even that was far-fetched; terrorists who spent most of their time in caves in Waziristan didn't organize abductions of Navy captains from Bahrain. "I'll keep you in the loop."

_"Thanks, Kim. How is DiNozzo, anyway?"_

"Overworked," Tomblin replied. "He still hasn't hired another agent, and Freiler's a good kid, but he's not senior field agent material, much less senior field agent without a junior field agent. It's a lot for two people to handle."

_"Well, Ziva's there now. She'll help out."_

"Ziva works for Mossad, McGee. She doesn't work for NCIS anymore."

_"Well, I know, but Ziva—"_

"Is an agent of a foreign government. There's a lot that DiNozzo isn't going to be able to share with her, and even more that she isn't going to be able to share with him." She didn't bring up DiNozzo's frustration about Mossad's involvement with his current case and his difficulties getting Ziva or Cohen to talk about it. She couldn't even imagine how hard on the relationship that must be; the one time that her and Jeff's jobs collided, he couldn't tell her everything she needed to know to work a case because of doctor-patient confidentiality, and as a result, they had a fight that left them not speaking for six months. She didn't know what they would do if their daily lives involved keeping secrets from each other.

_"I guess that's true,"_ McGee commented, interrupting her internal reverie. _"I guess I just have a hard time thinking of Ziva as anything but, well, Ziva. Anyway, sorry to interrupt you and wake you from your nap. Thanks for your input. Tell Cunningham I hope he gets better soon."_

"Thanks. I'll pass that along. And sorry I couldn't be more help."

_"Well, it's like you said. We can't blame everything on the terrorists. Good luck helping Tony find his JAG."_

"Have a good night, McGee. And good luck with your pilot."


	14. Chapter 14

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 14**

_A/N: First of all, thank you to everyone who's been following. I know it's hard, with the less-frequent posting schedule (blame my job; that's what I do), and I definitely appreciate it. Second, this chapter has one my OCs from a story posted over on Fictionpress (Captain Chris Hammer). It's not necessary to read that story first, but I definitely wouldn't mind the extra traffic over on that account. Pretty much, all you need to know is that he was deployed to Iraq with Tomblin and Jeff Cunningham, back when Tomblin was in the Marine Corps. Oh, and he has really bad ADHD and can't seem to follow a conversation (but you'll see that here)._

_Enjoy!_

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Kim Tomblin had already been at the office for almost an hour when Captain Chris Hammer appeared in her doorway, fifteen minutes early for their 0600 videoconference with the Bahrain office. "Whoa," Tomblin observed, making a show of checking her watch. "You're actually early for something. I expected to get a call from you in two hours saying you made a wrong turn on PCH and ended up in Vegas."

"Nail gave me a GPS for my birthday, said she was tired of me getting distracted while driving and ending up lost," the wiry Marine captain replied. "And she set it to remind me of directions every two minutes, so it's great. I can't manage to get that far off track in that time."

"Your wife knows you too well. How's she doing?"

Hammer shrugged, glancing down at the bag in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh. I told her Cunningham was back in the hospital. She made you guys muffins. I swear, she needs to get back to work and cutting up people's brains. This whole maternity leave shit is making her weird. Yesterday I caught her shopping online for diapers and shit. I went to the store to buy diapers the other day and—"

"Hammer," Tomblin interrupted, knowing he could—and would—continue talking for hours if she didn't redirect him. "How're the little wrenches?" They all knew that referring to members of the Hammer family as tools wasn't really all that funny, but everyone in their group of Marines did it, including Hammer himself. In fact, he probably started the trend, calling his wife Nahla 'Nail', informing them that the first time he met her, he said, 'I'm a Hammer and I'm going to nail that.' And then they lived happily ever after.

"The big one is enjoying being a big brother, most of the time," Hammer replied. "The little one doesn't really do much yet. They don't really become fun until about four months."

"Don't let Jeff hear you say that. Or Nahla."

"Yeah, no shit. You guys gonna have any?"

"Wrenches? I mean, kids?" Being around Hammer always made her head work a little bit differently than it should. "We're tabling any thought remotely related to procreation until after Jeff can walk again. You ready to get started with Bahrain?"

"Lead the way, very special agent."

"You're so fucking cute, Hammer." The Recon Marine just grinned and shrugged. "Just remember, I can still kick your ass, so don't make me look like an idiot in there."

"Yes, ma'am."

"What did I just say about kicking your ass?" Tomblin asked rhetorically as she led the way to video conference room. It wasn't quite at the same level as MTAC, but it served their purposes. And for the last four weeks, it had mostly been serving Tomblin's purposes. At all hours of the day and night. As much as she loved Jeff and appreciated the opportunity to be here with him while he was recovering from his injuries, she still couldn't figure out how she let the powers that be at NCIS talk her into this position.

The network coordinates for the Bahrain office were still burned into her memory, requiring only seconds to enter into the computer, and then it wasn't too many more seconds before DiNozzo appeared on the large screen. "Burning the midnight oil again, DiNozzo?" Tomblin asked.

_"Not nearly as much so tonight as last night,"_ the Bahrain SAC replied. _"This the Recon captain?"_

"Yeah," Tomblin replied. "DiNozzo, Captain Chris Hammer, Charlie Company commander, 1st Recon. Hammer, Special Agent Tony DiNozzo."

"Nice to meet you, sir," Hammer greeted.

_"Thanks for coming in this early,"_ DiNozzo replied. Tomblin was impressed that he thought to thank them; maybe he wasn't exactly like Gibbs after all.

"Not really that early," Hammer said. "I have a three-week-old at home. I don't really sleep. Actually, I didn't really sleep before the little wrench was born. Never really been much for sleep, always too much stuff going around in my head—"

"Hammer," Tomblin interrupted. "Remember what I said about taking your meds so you can stay focused?"

"Sorry, Tomblin. Sir."

_"I'll forgive you if you can tell me about Abdul Hasan Zazi."_

"Yeah, Tomblin said you wanted to know about that. I don't know what to tell you, sir, other than it was a routine mission. Went down pretty much the same as other missions, really. We had the intel of where Zazi was, called Tomblin and the Mossad guy and went for it. He was exactly where he should have been, took a couple other bad guys while we were there. Zazi doesn't really speak Arabic, so Tomblin was fairly useless—"

"Hey!"

"Sorry, Tomblin, but you just do better in Iraq. Hey, do you remember that time with that guy in Fallujah—"

"Focus, Hammer."

"I'm thinking I should have taken Cunningham up on all his threats to have me evac'ed from Iraq 'cause of my ADHD."

"I'll get right down to building a time machine so we have Jeff do that for you. While we're waiting for that to happen, though, why don't you get back to Afghanistan and Zazi?"

"Right. Uh, the Mossad operative, who does speak Pashto, didn't have any more luck with Zazi than Tomblin, so maybe Zazi was the problem and not Tomblin, although Tomblin's always a bit of a problem. Hey, can I file a claim a few years after the fact, 'cause she used to beat me back when she was a Marine—"

"And I'll do it again, if you can't figure out how to stay on topic," Tomblin said warningly. She turned back to the screen. "I'm so sorry, DiNozzo, but I tried warning you."

_"Anything about that day that made you suspect that Zazi was up to something?"_

"You mean other than the standard 'death to America' shit?" Hammer asked with a shrug. "No, not really," he continued. "I mean, he was genuinely surprised that he was caught. That was it. Like I said, sir, there was nothing unusual about the case at all." He frowned. "Why the sudden interest? It was more than nine months ago."

"You actually remember when it was?" Tomblin asked.

"Nail just had a baby, remember? Kinda easy to remember things that happened nine months before that."

"Thanks," Tomblin said, making a face. "That's a bit of TMI."

"Not as much as anything that's ever come out of Gorsuch's mouth."

"True."

Surprisingly enough, it was Hammer who seemed to remember that they were on a video conference, turning back to the screen. "If you can tell me, sir, what's with the question? I thought we were done with Zazi. I thought he was going to be tried or something."

Both Tomblin and DiNozzo frowned at each other via the video link. _"The JAG who was supposed to be prosecuting is missing,"_ DiNozzo finally said. _"We're trying to figure out where he is."_

"Wow, sir, you lost a JAG?" Hammer blurted out.

"Helping or hurting, Hammer?" Tomblin asked.

"Sorry, sir."

_"Is there any way that Zazi could have had anything to do with the JAG's disappearance?"_

Hammer frowned at DiNozzo's question. "I don't see how, sir," he finally said. "There was nothing around where we found Zazi that could be used to kidnap a lawyer. Unless he was traveling by Humvee and got IED'd. That's all they had. That's all anybody in Afghanistan had, really."

On the other side of the video conference, and the other side of the world, DiNozzo frowned at the words. Tomblin had warned him that speaking with Capt Hammer would be low-yield, but that this point, he had to follow everything he had, especially since he wasn't getting anything from the Mossad side of the camp. "Why was Mossad there?" he asked Hammer, hoping that somehow, the Marine had been privy to something that Tomblin wasn't. He doubted it; Tomblin didn't seem to miss much.

The thin Marine captain frowned from San Diego, glancing over at Tomblin as he thought about his answer. _"I don't really know, sir,"_ he finally said. _"We joked about it, but he never really gave me a straight answer, made references to some Mossad assassination list and then started laughing. But he didn't kill anybody. At least, he didn't kill anybody when I was looking. Maybe he snuck off and did that while we were sleeping, but I doubt it. We always have someone awake standing guard, and he would have told me if that happened. My guys are good about that sort of shit."_ Hammer winced; DiNozzo was sure the captain was going to say something further and was stopped by an off-camera kick by Tomblin. _"Honestly, sir, we spent most of the time talking about _Transformers_."_

_ "They really did,"_ Tomblin confirmed, making a face. _"It got really old, really fast."_

_ "Hey, did I ever tell you that he sent Nicholas a _Transformer_ toy for his birthday? I didn't ever remember mentioning Nicholas' birthday, or even that I had a kid, but I got a present anyway."_

_ "You mean Nicholas got a present,"_ Tomblin corrected. _"And you probably didn't say anything. Cohen probably had their analyst hack into DoD records and find out that way."_ DiNozzo didn't say anything, but he had a feeling Tomblin was right. Not that he needed any reminders, but if he did, that would serve as a good one to keep Mossad happy. There seemed to be no limits to what they could—or would—do.

He was feeling completely dejected that nothing came of the conversation with Hammer, and he was pretty sure that Tomblin picked up on that. _"Is there anything I can help with?"_ she asked, somewhat reluctantly. He remembered that she had taken a sick day the day before for Cunningham's surgery, and felt bad about putting her to work when she wanted to be taking care of her boyfriend, but there was actually something that she was uniquely qualified for.

"Could you talk to Rabb's wife?" he asked. "We've been keeping her up to date on the investigation—that's not hard, since we haven't gotten anywhere—but maybe she'll tell you something she didn't tell us."

Tomblin frowned at that. _"Do you think she's holding something back?"_

"Not really," DiNozzo replied. "But I think she'll relate to you. You're both former Marine officers living with sailors. And you didn't directly lose her husband."

Tomblin frowned again as she glanced down at her watch, probably calculating time zone differences between San Diego and London. _"Yeah,"_ she finally said. _"I can do that. Hey, have you talked to McGee at all?"_

"Don't exactly have time for social calls around here, Tomblin."

_"Hey, don't go whining to me about how much your life sucks. I'm the one who got up at oh-dark-thirty to video conference with you instead of going to Balboa to take Jeff home."_ She shook her head slightly before speaking again. _"I didn't mean a social call. They're investigating a fighter crash in the Indian Ocean, thinks there might have been some sabotage involved or something. I mentioned that you were looking for a lawyer who used to be a pilot and he latched onto that, seems to think that there's a way the two can be related. I don't; I think they're two completely separate things, but I thought I'd play messenger there and pass that along."_

"I agree with you. I don't think there's anything there, but at this point, it's looking like that's more of a possibility than this having anything to do with Zazi." He sighed in defeat, really wishing he could just go home, enjoy a nice dinner with Ziva, watch a movie, and wake up the next morning to go for a run and head into the office to find that the case had solved itself, but he knew he couldn't do any of that. "Thanks for the meeting."

_"Sorry it didn't give you the answers you were looking for."_

"Yeah," DiNozzo replied. "It seems like nothing is."


	15. Chapter 15

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 15**

_A/N: Sorry about the delay. Things have been insane at work, and I don't get nearly as much time to write as I'd like. I hope you're enjoying the story, though!_

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As it turned out, it wasn't too much after the video conference with Tomblin and Captain Hammer that DiNozzo declared that they had accomplished everything they could accomplish and that they should go to bed and get some sleep. He had called Mrs. Rabb before leaving the office to inform her that Tomblin was going to be calling her, but the response to that phone call was pretty much the same as his response when he called Sergei Zhukov earlier that day: absolutely nothing.

He was pretty sure that it was physically impossible to actually drop off the face of the earth, but by all appearances, that was exactly what Rabb did.

He was still feeling dejected about the lack of progress with the case when he came into the apartment he and Ziva were temporarily using, early enough to surprise Ziva in the kitchen. "I did not expect you home until around midnight," she admitted.

"Nothing else to do," he replied with a frustrated shrug as Ziva reached into the cupboard for another plate and glass for DiNozzo's dinner. "I talked with Tomblin and the Recon captain who captured Zazi. Absolutely nothing new there. Thanks," he said, accepting a glass of wine as Ziva gestured him to the table. "I just don't know where else to look," he admitted.

"Rabb had to have gone somewhere," Ziva pointed out. "People do not disappear into thick air."

"Thin air," he corrected absently, not bothering to tell her that he had the exact same thought earlier that evening.

"That does not make any sense," Ziva said with a frown. "Thick air would be easier to disappear in than thin air, no?"

"I think that's the point, sweetcheeks," he replied. She handed him a plate of some sort of pasta dish before joining him at the table. "Thanks."

"You are welcome," she said, taking a sip of her wine. "I am sorry that I cannot give you more information on Zazi's capture."

He sighed again; this whole case was making their relationship much more complicated. Or maybe the relationship was making the case more complicated. If it weren't for the fact that he was living with a Mossad officer, he wouldn't think anything of the fact that Mossad wasn't sharing their information. "I know," he replied grudgedly. "And the more people I hear it from, the more sure I am that Zazi had nothing to do with it. It would just be a nice place to start."

"I know," she said comfortingly. After all, she had been there, too, with the cases that seemed to go nowhere. "Have you had any luck tracking the plane?"

"No," he replied. "I have an entire room of analysts on it, but there's just so much data out there. There are countless minor airports that, in most countries in the world, don't require a manifest for enough money. Or even not enough money. And then there are the countries that aren't going to be sharing that information with us. And without tail numbers, there's really nowhere to start looking."

"Somebody knows those tail numbers," Ziva pointed out.

"But we don't know _who_, and finding that person is just as difficult as finding the plane itself. Air traffic control at Bahrain doesn't even know anything." He chewed his food contemplatively and swallowed. "Enough about that. How was the apartment search, part two? Please tell me there's not going to be a part three. Sequels are bad enough without becoming trilogies."

"It was better than this morning," she said, her tone conciliatory, "but I do not think that we are done."

"Did you see _anything_ that meets your ridiculously high standards?"

"There was one that I am fond of," Ziva admitted, "but I am not sure that you would agree."

He shrugged. "I'm okay with anything you're okay with. I just don't want to be crashing at Tomblin's old place forever. This place is definitely not big enough for two people. It's barely big enough for one person, which I guess makes sense. It's not like Tomblin takes up too much space."

"You are being overly dramatic. She is not that small."

"She's barely above the legal standards for midgets."

"I believe they prefer to be called little people, Tony."

"You've been watching that TLC show again, haven't you."

"Do not be ridiculous," Ziva scoffed. "You know I like the one with that angry baker. He is very Italian, yes?"

"Hey, don't compare me to that guy," Tony argued. "He's from _New Jersey_."

Ziva frowned. "That is right next to New York, where you are from." Tony stared at her in disbelief.

"Okay, I know you're not American, so I'll try to forgive you for that, but even you should know that there is a _big_ difference between New York and New Jersey. A _big_ difference."

"It is not important, anyway," Ziva said dismissively. "You have not lived in New York since you were fourteen."

"It is important," Tony argued. "It's where I'm _from_. It would be like saying it's not important that you're from Israel."

"Except that I am still a citizen of Israel and am an official of that government," Ziva said mildly. "Why are we having this conversation?"

"I—well—why is that important?"

Ziva rolled her eyes as she carried her now-empty plate to the sink, trying to remember how the conversation got to where it was. When it didn't come to her in the first couple of seconds, she shrugged it away and moved on. "Would you like dessert?"

"You made dessert? I am really liking this staying at—"

"Do not finish that thought, Tony, or you will regret it," Ziva said warningly. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut. "And I did not make dessert. There was a sale on chocolate cake at the grocery store."

"That works."

"And I rented a movie. I believe it is one that you mentioned during a stakeout that you wanted to see, but we never got around to going to the theater."

Pasta, chocolate cake, and a movie. Tony was pretty sure he had never a loved anything or anyone as much as he loved Ziva at that moment.

* * *

Despite his excitement about the fact that Ziva rented a movie, and one that he wanted to watch at that, he was so exhausted from his hours while working the Rabb case—and his hours trying to stay afloat as the new SAC for the four weeks before that—that he was fast asleep barely twenty minutes into the film, waking a few hours later to see the TV off and the room darkened, deep snores coming from the open door to the adjacent bedroom.

But it wasn't the snoring or lack of sound coming from the television that woke him. It was something he had read in Rabb's personnel file and something Tomblin said, and somehow in his sleep, he fully realized the significance of those two things.

"Ziva," he said, shaking his former partner awake in his excitement. "Did you know there was a plane crash off an aircraft carrier a few days ago?"

"Tony, I am holding a gun and am not nearly awake enough for riddles," Ziva murmured dangerously. He was too excited to be deterred by her threats.

"Rabb had a leave of absence from the Navy and worked as a pilot for the CIA," he continued excitedly. "He qualified on different planes. Including the F-18, which is what crashed."

"I am not seeing your point, Tony."

"What if Rabb had something to do with the crash?" he asked, speaking deliberately slow to try to control his excitement at the perceived break in the case.

"You are saying that you believe a Navy captain caused an F-18 to crash?"

"No. Well, maybe. But no. I'm just saying, maybe they're related. Maybe there's someone behind—"

"Someone behind both the abduction of a Navy captain about to prosecute a terrorist for his crimes and an F-18 crashing off an aircraft carrier? Tony, that is more far-reached than one of your movies."

"Far-fetched," he corrected. Come to think of it, that was pretty much the same thing to Tomblin earlier that evening when she brought up McGee's case. He sighed. "I don't know how they'd be related," he admitted. "But we have a pilot-turned-lawyer who used to work for the CIA and a classified plane that took off from Bahrain right after his plane landed."

"That much we know," Ziva agreed. "But that does not explain where the F-18 comes in."

"I haven't figured that out yet, either," he confessed.

"Do they know why the F-18 crashed?"

"Gibbs and McGee are working on it."

"And Wilson and their new probationary field agent," Ziva added. Tony waved the reminder away dismissively. "Tony, they are probably two unrelated events—"

"Why would the CIA want Rabb?"

Ziva frowned at the interruption, finally sitting up in bed. Tony blinked as he registered that she was wearing one of her more revealing nightgowns. "You do not know that it was the CIA," she finally said. "They are not the only agency in the world with classified planes."

"How many does Mossad have?"

"If I told you that, there would be no point in it being classified. Captain Rabb has had a long career with the Navy. In that time, I am sure he has made enemies of other governments. One could have kidnapped him and taken him to places unknown. And if it was the CIA, why would they want to crash an American fighter plane?"

"Huh?"

Ziva sighed and pushed back her hair. "You think that Rabb's disappearance and the F-18 crash are related," she said slowly. "You think that the CIA took Rabb from the runway in Bahrain in a classified plane. But why would the CIA have anything to do with a fighter crash?"

"I don't know," he admitted in defeat, collapsing onto the bed. Ziva rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. "I guess it just seemed to make a lot more sense in my head."

"That is not surprising," Ziva said with a small smile. "There is not much in there besides movie plots, and they often confuse the situation."

"True." He sighed. "I just want something that'll lead to something."

She laid back down, resting her head on his shoulder before kissing his cheek. "You will find that, Tony," she assured him. "And you will find Rabb. I am sure of that."

The green minutes flashed by on the digital clock without either of them speaking. "I'm glad one of us is," Tony finally said. He only got a loud snore in response.


	16. Chapter 16

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 16**

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This time, when Special Agent Tim McGee knocked on the door of room 5C03 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he didn't find one woman in the single room, but two. "Uh, hi," he greeted lamely.

"Hi, Tim," Captain Harlan McNamee greeted from her position on the hospital bed, up fully in a seated position. She gestured to the young-looking blond woman sitting in the chair at her side. "This is Naomi Leeman."

"My husband's in the squadron with Angel," Mrs. Leeman explained. She briefly looked over at McNamee before turning back to McGee. "The guys are still out, so I volunteered to come hang out with her while she's in the hospital."

"Tim McGee," he greeted, crossing the room to shake her hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Tim was actually my TA in one of my freshman bioengineering courses at Johns Hopkins," McNamee said, smiling over at him. "Now he's a special agent at NCIS. They're investigating the crash."

"I, uh, have some questions for Captain McNamee," McGee said, feeling bad for interrupting McNamee's visiting time by making her talk about the crash.

"That's fine," Mrs. Leeman replied, rising from her chair. "I promised Brad I'd give him a call and fill him in on how Angel's doing." She glanced down at the pilot. "I'll be back soon."

"Take your time," McNamee replied. She waited until the blond was out of the room before rolling her eyes in McGee's direction. "Naomi means well, and she's one of the few wives I get along with, but sometimes I just need a few minutes away from the squadron." She frowned slightly. "Of course, you're here to ask me questions about the squadron, so I guess that's not going to happen."

"Sorry," McGee apologized. McNamee shrugged her good shoulder.

"No need to apologize for doing your job. Ask away."

McGee glanced down at the notes he jotted for himself on his iPhone, trying to figure out where to start. "They took some blood tests after they got you to the hospital," he finally began. "It was positive for stimulants."

"Go-pills," McNamee replied immediately. "Pilot candy. They're prescribed by the squadron's flight surgeon." She shrugged again. "I hate taking them, to be truthful. They make me all shaky, and that's not a good feeling when trying to fly a Hornet, but we had been running drills at all hours and I needed the boost. I probably would have taken an Ambien after getting back to the ship, if I had made it back. Those are our no-go-pills."

"The go-pills ever affect your flying?"

"Never," McNamee said emphatically. "I would never take anything that would affect my flying. I don't even drink anymore. Haven't since my first day of flight school."

"Speaking of your flying… How'd you go from a freshman pre-med biomedical engineering major to a Hornet pilot?"

She smiled slightly at that, a faraway look passing quickly on her face. "Sophomore cruise," she finally said. "I was on an aircraft carrier and they had me with the flight surgeon, since I was a biomedical engineering major and wanted to go to med school, but I was much more interested in what the pilots were doing than the doctor taking care of them. Whenever I thought about changing things, though, I just got really nervous, didn't know how to tell my parents that I was thinking about being a pilot or anything. I stuck with the major and took the MCAT and did everything I was supposed to, even applying to schools, but I still thought about watching the planes take off from the aircraft carrier." She smiled again. "I didn't tell my mother that I was going to OCS instead of doing research for the summer before senior year until I already had my bag packed for Quantico, and then that was that." She shrugged her good shoulder. "Flight school is entirely based off GPA, which is why people say 'poli sci and fly'—every pilot majors in political science so they can keep their GPAs. I graduated at the top of my class, but I didn't have a four-point. My mom still wanted me to go to med school, but I decided that I really wanted to be a pilot. So I did my time as an engineering officer, got the Corps to pay for me to go back to school, and managed to slip into a slot for flight school. Guess it was hard for them to say no after I had a master's in aero/astro." She chuckled. "My mom keeps mentioning that it's never too late to go to medical school. Guess she really just wants to introduce me as, 'my daughter, the doctor.'"

"My mom does the same thing," McGee confessed.

"I think every mom does," McNamee laughed. "But I bet you aren't the only child of a former debutant who brings up her friends' grandkids every chance she gets."

"Well, no," McGee admitted with a laugh of his own. "She's from here, actually. But she does do the grandkids thing. My sister's a lot younger than me, so the assumption was always that I'd get married and have kids first, but Mom's started hinting that Sarah's going to end up with kids before I do."

"Mothers," McNamee said, rolling her eyes. "But what can you do, right? Oh!" she said with a laugh. "I'm sorry. You came here to ask questions about the crash, not tell stories of mothers."

"I think it was my fault, actually," he replied. "I asked about how you became a pilot."

"Well, I'll try to keep you on track from now on," she said with mock seriousness. "Ask your next question, Special Agent McGee."

He couldn't help but smile, remembering that same sense of humor from years before, before becoming serious again. This was about investigating the crash of her plane and death of her fellow pilot, not joking with a former student. "Do you remember anything else? About the crash, I mean?"

She shook her head sadly, also becoming serious. "I keep trying to," she said, sounding frustrated, "but nothing comes. I remember heading out to the planes with Guido, and then my plane going dark, and I keep thinking that I saw Guido's plane right before I ejected, but that's it. Oh," she added, glancing over at her shoulder. "I remember ejecting, too, because that fucking hurt. Sorry about the profanity." He waved aside the apology, but she kept talking before he could say anything. "That's what I keep thinking, but that can't be right, right? I mean, if the squadron was called back to the carrier, why would Guido be there, but he was, right? He had to have been, or we wouldn't have crashed, and he wouldn't have…" Her voice trailed off with a shake of her head. "It just doesn't make sense."

McGee remembered the conversation he had with Abby in her lab. "You would probably know more about this than me," he began. "Is there anything that can remotely knock out the electronics on a plane?"

"You mean like a small EM pulse or something?" McNamee frowned. "Nothing that I can think of," she said. "A pulse would affect all the planes in the squadron, not just one, unless you're getting into the realm of theoretical. Here, hand me that paper and pen." He did as she asked. "So, the way an EMP works," she began as she began sketching on the paper, "is that when a large-yield explosion—we usually think of nuclear explosions when we think EMP—anyway, when a large-yield explosion happens, it produces these rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields that radiate out, like the whole ripples-in-a-pond thing. And then within this radius, you have voltage surges and current changes and everything. So, we know this happens. It's been described since the first nuclear detonations. The whole theoretical part comes in with the use of EMP as a targeted weapon. You _can_ create an electromagnetic pulse without a nuclear detonation, but it's much lower yield, and still requires a detonation of some sort or microwave generator or something. We don't have - actually, nobody has - anything that can create enough energy to cause an EMP that would be small enough to fit in a car or fighter jet or something. Even if we ever did, it would result in the same thing—ripples in a pond. If it was strong enough to knock out the electronics in one plane," she went back to sketching, this time drawing out a squadron of shapes that could be fighter jets in formation, "it's going to knock them all out, and it would _definitely_ be large enough to have been picked up by the equipment on the carrier." She added the rings from the first picture and an aircraft carrier, sketching randomly. "I can't speak for what kind of technology we'll see in the future—after all, if you told someone in 1950 that we'd have phones that we could carry around in our pocket that would allow us to watch color television and access computers, they'd probably have you admitted to an asylum of some sort—but I just don't see how we'd ever be able to make an EMP that can be targeted the way a laser could be." She looked up at McGee and looked amused. "I can't believe this," she said. "I can't believe _I'm_ explaining something to _you_. It's just… It's weird. It goes against everything I learned during my freshman year."

"I knew that about EMP," he said defensively. "I was just hoping that there was something new in the aero/astro arena."

Harlan McNamee shook her head. "I'm sorry, Tim," she said, sounding honestly apologetic. "I really wish there was something, something that could have caused what happened to my plane, something that would keep me from second guessing everything I did or my crew—"

"Your crew," McGee interrupted. McNamee frowned at him. "If it wasn't remote, it must have been something in your plane. That leaves something you did, something happening by accident, or something caused by your maintenance crew. You said your squadron leader's lights went out, too, right?"

"Yeah, Everest lost power, too," she said slowly. "What are you saying, Tim? That one of our crew is trying to kill the pilots? Why would they do that? How does that even make sense? What would they have to gain? What would be the point?"

"I don't know, Harley," McGee said honestly. "But I'm going to find out. I promise."


	17. Chapter 17

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 17**

_A/N: Sorry, not much in this chapter, just felt like playing with some of my past OCs a bit. And in case you're wondering, yes, the world of military medicine is that small._

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McGee stepped out of Harley McNamee's room and right into a group of young doctors and med students gathered just outside the door. "—was 101.4, pulse…" The Air Force second lieutenant in a short white coat allowed his voice to trail off at the sight of the NCIS agent stepping out of the room. For a long minute, nobody spoke, the medical team looking at McGee and him looking back.

"Agent McGee?" He turned to the woman who said his name, finding himself just about face-to-face with a dark-haired lieutenant commander in a khaki uniform and long white coat.

"Dr. Aachen," he said in surprise. It had probably been eight months since the internist, then deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan, was kidnapped from her office by a Navy corpsman and Army medic for a five million dollar ransom to be paid by her husband, a bestselling author with the same publishing house as McGee. He hadn't realized that Dr. Aachen was back at work already; the only reason he knew she was back from deployment was that the collaboration he had been working on with her husband, Peter Kirkan, had abruptly stopped about six weeks before.

"You must be here about Captain McNamee," Dr. Alyse Aachen observed. "Seeing as you came out of her room and all."

"Yeah," he said lamely. "Are you taking care of her?"

The medical corps lieutenant commander opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the sound of the pager clipped to her belt. "Welcome back to the wards," she muttered darkly. "That was the best thing about Afghanistan. No pager. I'm glad to be done with the IEDs and overzealous corpsmen, though." She flipped open the pager and frowned. "I need to return this. Agent McGee, stick around, we'll talk."

"Sure."

"In the meantime," she said as she headed down the hall, "Rob, fill Special Agent McGee in on how Captain McNamee's doing."

"Of course, Dr. Aachen," a short and pudgy Army captain replied. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose as he turned to McGee. "I'm Dr. Rob Greene, the resident on the case. Do you want to come into the team room to talk?"

"Sure," McGee replied. He followed Dr. Greene down the hall in the same direction Dr. Aachen had headed; in fact, they headed into the same room, much to Dr. Greene's surprise.

"No, I'm not saying that I want you to stop treating Captain McNamee's pain," Dr. Aachen was saying into the phone, looking up to roll her blue eyes as Dr. Greene. "I'm saying that since her only issue is surgical, that it would probably be better if she was being taken care of by orthopedics, not medicine." She paused to listen for the response, pinching the bridge of her nose. "And she's on antibiotics for the pneumonia," she said, seeming to interrupt. "Infectious disease as been consulted and gave the recommendations for the antibiotics. They're planning on continuing to follow. If you want, I can talk directly with Dr. Sherwood—" She stopped again and sighed. "Listen," she said emphatically, "I understand that your service is busy. Really, I do. I understand that we're still getting casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. I just got back from Afghanistan, so I think I know pretty well what's going on on that front, but what I don't think you realize is that we're pretty busy, too, and that an otherwise healthy thirty-year-old with only a torn rotator cuff is going to be better off managed by ortho than medicine. No, don't give me that," she scolded. "What year are you, Dr. Lewandowski? Third-year resident? You do realize that I'm an attending, right?" She sighed in to the phone, rolling her eyes again at Dr. Greene, who was trying to keep from laughing. "No, I want to talk to either your chief or your staff. You have my pager; have them give me a call." She hung up the phone. "I hate dealing with ortho," she sighed.

"What was that about?" McGee asked, eyes wide. Dr. Aachen shrugged a shoulder.

"Standard turf to medicine," she explained. "It's a hospital thing. No use getting into it. So, Captain McNamee. She came in the other night after search and rescue pulled her out of the Indian Ocean, three hours after she crashed. She was briefly knocked unconscious during her descent and ended up aspirating—inhaling—a little bit of sea water, which is where the pneumonia came from. She's doing pretty well on the antibiotics and seems to be getting better on that front. As far as the head injury, there's no sign of any structural damage and she seems to be doing fine, but we'll have her do some neurocognitive tests in about a week to see how things look."

"Uh, her blood tests came back positive for stimulants?" McGee asked.

"Pilot candy." Everyone in the room turned toward the door, where a tall man in scrubs with a surgical cap over his sandy blond hair was standing. He grinned as he adjusted his thick, black-rimmed glasses. "At least, that's what I called it back in the day, when I was prescribing it."

"Seth!" Dr. Aachen greeted, jumping out of her chair to embrace the surgeon. "I feel like it's been years! Sorry I missed the wedding—post-deployment trip around the country, visiting anyone and everyone. I can't remember if we were in Washington or Texas that weekend."

"Believe me, Hannah and I understand the post-deployment visits. And the pre-deployment visits." He winced slightly, which made Dr. Aachen frown.

"Is Hannah being deployed?"

"Yeah. Next month, seven months on a destroyer."

"Great honeymoon."

"No kidding. Hey, we finally got everything moved in, if you and Peter want to come over for dinner at some point before Hannah takes off."

"Or you guys can come over to our place. I don't think Hannah needs to deal with hosting a dinner party while she's preparing for deployment."

"Except you don't have a kosher kitchen," the surgeon observed.

"So?" Dr. Aachen asked with a shrug. "We'll have it catered. Come on, Seth. I'm not a very good cook and Pete makes a lot of money. It's pretty much the perfect arrangement. Besides, since when did you keep kosher?"

"Since I married the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi. And I grew up keeping kosher and managed to maintain that through the Naval Academy and med school. It was you heathens on the _Vinson_ who corrupted me." McGee couldn't be sure, but he suspected that this was the guy who just married Lt. Hannah Sault, a wedding that Tony and Ziva attended on account of their close relationship with the bride, beginning with the case that started with the death of Lt. Sault's then-boyfriend and ending with the NCIS special agent and Mossad liaison sleeping together.

That was assuming there weren't too many daughters of Orthodox rabbis named Hannah who were serving in the Navy and just got married, that is.

"Hey, Lew said that you're trying to turf your patient to us," the surgeon said suddenly.

"Yeah," Dr. Aachen replied. "Captain McNamee. You want her?"

The surgeon shrugged. "Why not? She's post-op from a rotator cuff repair with a minor pneumonia. Even _our_ interns can handle that."

"Thanks, Seth. Oh." She looked over at McGee. "This is Special Agent McGee from NCIS. He's investigating the plane crash. Agent McGee, Dr. Seth Ostheimer, orthopedic surgery. We were flight surgeons on the _Vinson_ together, years and years and years ago."

"Nice to meet you," Dr. Ostheimer greeted, leaning forward to shake McGee's hand. "I have a lotta respect for NCIS. Probably wouldn't have gotten married to my wife if it weren't for you guys. Do you know Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David, by any chance?"

"Uh, yeah," McGee replied. "They used to be on my team."

"Huh. Small world. How're they liking Bahrain so far?"

_Yeah, definitely the guy who just married Hannah Sault_, McGee confirmed to himself. "Tony's been working pretty hard," the NCIS agent replied. "Ziva just got there a couple days ago."

"It was pretty poor timing on their part," Dr. Ostheimer said. "They had tickets to the OSU-Miami game down in Miami, had to give them to my brother-in-law and his wife instead. Heard it was a pretty good game, if anything Jake says can be believed."

"Which is doubtful," Dr. Aachen said with a smile. "He's still trying to diagnose me with PTSD. Comes by at least once a day, asking if I'm sure I should be back on the wards."

"And you don't let him get you out of it?" Dr. Ostheimer joked. "I avoid the wards like the plague."

"Well, yeah, but you're a surgeon. Some of us like use our heads every once in a while."

"Ouch, Alyse. That hurts," Dr. Ostheimer said with a dramatic wince. "Now that I think about it, I don't know if I want your turf."

"Too late to back out now, Seth. I have witnesses. Speaking of psychiatrists, though - actually, speaking of Jake, since he was the resident on-call when she came in - psych consults is following Capt McNamee. It's SOP when someone comes in from a MEDEVAC."

"Great. So now you're making me deal with my brother-in-law, too. Now I'm really don't want your turf." He gestured at the scrubs-clad medical student behind him. "You, take notes. What does psych say?"

Dr. Aachen leaned forward to open something on the computer, scanning it quickly. "Disturbances in sleep, not otherwise specified. They recommend Ambien prn, which was ordered. Since she's a pilot, she probably takes it every once in a while anyway. Normal bereavement - one of her fellow pilots also died in the crash. And then their standard diagnosis: life circumstances."

"I hate it when they write that on a note. Which they always do."

"I know. As if the rest of us don't have lives that we deal with," Dr. Aachen replied, rolling her eyes. "You can make fun of Jake for that for me. How does Friday sound for dinner?"

"No, that's Shabbat. And I'm on call. You guys free on Sunday?"

"Sunday works. I'll shoot you an email with the address and let Pete know that you guys are coming over. And I'll find a caterer with a kosher kitchen."

"Looking forward to it."

"Oh, and Seth?" Dr. Aachen continued as the orthopedic surgeon turned to leave the room. "Tell your junior resident to stop talking back to attendings."

"Believe me, we've tried," Dr. Ostheimer assured her. "And don't take it personally. He doesn't really respect attendings on any service. Including orthopedics." He shrugged. "Too bad the Navy doesn't really hang people from yardarms anymore. That one in front of the hospital's got Lew's name all over it."


	18. Chapter 18

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 18**

_A/N: In celebration of Veterans Day and everyone who served in the armed forces, I'm giving you a chapter a day early. And no matter what country you're in, thank someone who served._

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By the time he finished at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and dealt with DC traffic to get from Bethesda to the Navy Yard, McGee ended up arriving in MTAC a good five or ten minutes after the video conference with LtCol Perry, the commanding officer of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 251, began.

Gibbs turned at the sound of the opening door and frowned in McGee's direction; despite his best efforts, the senior field agent could feel his face turning red at the lapse of senior field agently duties. Dwayne Wilson, on the other hand, offered a nod in McGee's direction and reached for a headset for his fellow agent. "Sorry I'm late, sir," McGee offered. "Special Agent Tim McGee. I was checking on Captain McNamee at Bethesda."

_"How's Angel doing?"_ the colonel asked.

"Uh, doing well, sir. She had surgery on her shoulder and the orthopedic surgeon says that's healing well. She still doesn't remember much of the crash, though."

_"Well, Agent McGee, all I can tell you about that is what I saw from my perspective, which was that she probably saved my life. I don't know what Guido was up to, but if Angel hadn't come between us, well, I don't even want to think about what could have happened."_

"What was Lt. Antonellis doing, Colonel?" Gibbs asked.

_"Hell if I know, Agent Gibbs,"_ Perry said, shaking his head. _"I don't even know if he knew what he was doing; don't even know if he had power at that point. The way power was going out left and right with our planes, it wouldn't have surprised me."_ McGee frowned at the colonel's words and made a mental note to go down to the lab as soon as they were done and check with Abby; they had heard the same sound when both Harley and LtCol Perry lost power. If they could find it coming from Lt. Antonellis, that would answer a lot of the questions that this case still had unanswered. _"But I do know that I ordered him, and the rest of the squadron, back to the carrier. As soon as Angel lost power, it changed from a training exercise to a life-or-death situation, and the first rule in getting everyone home in one piece is to get as many people as possible out of your airspace. That was the problem when he came back—too many people in the airspace, and somebody gets hurt. I thought he went back with the rest of the guys, though. Don't know when he turned around and came back, and have no idea what his motives for doing that could be."_

"Any idea on what could have caused the power failure, Colonel?" McGee asked.

_"Nothing yet, Agent McGee,"_ LtCol Perry replied. _"The maintenance crew at Camp Arifjan is still working on it. Are you assuming that the same thing happened to my plane happened to Angel's?"_

"That's the best we can do right now," McGee replied with a nod. "There were some things in the radio recordings that make us think that's the situation."

_"I wish I had something I could offer you, I really do, but I've been flying fighters a long time, and I've never seen anything like that. Heard horror stories, but most of them turned out to be pilot error. Definitely never heard of the power going out in two planes during the same training exercise."_

"Could it have been pilot error?" Gibbs asked.

_"I've been wondering that same thing, Agent Gibbs. Been going through the entire exercise in my head since I landed here in Kuwait, but I can't identify a single thing I haven't done a thousand other times."_

"What about Captain McNamee? How was she as a pilot?" Gibbs asked the colonel.

_"Pretty damn talented,"_ LtCol Perry replied automatically. _"Reaction times are pretty much off the chart, and that's saying a lot considering that our charts are only made up of pilots. And she's pretty fearless. She's pretty damn smart, too. We don't get many astronautical engineers in the cockpit, that's for sure. I suppose it's possible that her power failure was due to pilot error, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in her flying that night, and it definitely doesn't explain what happened to me. Or what Guido was doing. If he wasn't out there, Agent Gibbs, I'd give Angel better than even odds of landing her plane safely in Kuwait, even without power."_

"Was she hot-dogging the night of the crash?"

Perry frowned. _"Angel's always hot-dogging somewhat,"_ he said after thinking about the question. _"But really not much more than anyone else in the squadron. You ever met a Hornet pilot, Agent Gibbs?"_ He frowned again. _"She's calmed down a bit since she joined the squadron. Guess she thought she had something to prove, being the first girl or something."_

"That cause problems?"

_"We're a Hornet squadron. We thrive on problems."_ Perry frowned, as if thinking about the question. _"Yeah, when she first joined, there were some issues. We dealt with them."_

"You sure?"

Perry frowned again. _"There were a couple of complaints and two requests for transfer out of the squadron, all from the same two pilots. Juliet and Highlight. They thought her flying was too aggressive, didn't appreciate what she had to say when they tried talking talking to her about it. Started complaining to me about how she was gonna get us all killed, which was a load of bullshit. She may fly aggressively, but like I said, she's pretty damn talented. She can get away with it. You ever seen _Top Gun_, Agent Gibbs?" _He didn't wait for a response. _"Angel was kinda like Tom Cruise sometimes. She never buzzed a tower or any other shit like that, but she did some pretty stupid stuff for no apparent reason. She'd fly inverted for miles or climb steeper than necessary, maybe add a little flourish to routines. Nothing too dangerous, though." _He frowned, trying to collect his thoughts. _"Juliet and Highlight tried whining to me, like the little girls they are. I told them to man up and deal with it and that if I ever saw Angel doing anything that would endanger anyone else, I'd ground her without a second thought. Just like any other pilot." _Another frown. _"Like I said, we dealt with it."_

"Which of those is Major Hales?" Gibbs asked, obviously not willing to take Perry on his word about how well the internal problem with the squadron was handled.

_"Highlight."_

"Gonna want to talk to him."

_"Not a problem. The squadron's on communication lock-down here in Kuwait."_ The squadron commander frowned. _"Not to try to tell you how to do your job or anything, Agent Gibbs, but the sooner you get this thing figured out, the sooner we get to go home."_

"Noted, Colonel. We're doing what we can."

_ "Did you need anything else?"_

"Uh, I was just wondering about your maintenance crew," McGee said, ignoring the frown Gibbs was shooting in his direction.

_"What about them?"_

"Any of them have anything against any of the pilots?"

_"You mean other than the fact that they blame us for hurting their planes?"_ LtCol asked in reply, sounding amused. _"No, nothing really. Nothing that would cause any of them to sabotage a plane and risk someone's life. But we aren't here with our usual maintenance crew, Agent McGee. Since it was just a short exercise, we only brought our crew chief instead of the full crew. The _Bush_ has maintenance personnel."_

McGee blinked in surprise and made a mental note to have the fighter maintenance crew of the aircraft carrier checked out. He didn't know what could have happened that would prompt anyone to purposefully cause a power shortage, especially in two—possibly three—planes, but in his experience with NCIS, there were a lot of powerful motivators out there. Including money. Especially money.

"One more thing, Colonel," Gibbs said, shooting McGee another annoyed glance for interrupting the videoconference. "What kind of pilot was Lt. Antonellis?"

_"Young,"_ Perry said definitively. _"Thought he was invincible and God's gift to aviation. And women."_

"There anything between him and Captain McNamee?"

_"Nothing that anyone knew of, and if there was, someone would have known about it. There's no privacy inside a fighter squadron, and the men are pretty protective of Angel. If Guido had done __anything, or even tried anything, there's no way the rest of the squadron would have let him get away with it."_

"Unless Captain McNamee was the to start something. Women do that sometimes."

LtCol Perry looked surprised at the thought before shaking his head. _"While I know that's true, Agent Gibbs, that's not Angel. She's pretty focused on her career. She's never said anything, but I think she's going for astronaut corps. She had a pretty good chance of getting it someday, too, if it weren't for this."_

"What do you mean?" Gibbs asked with a frown.

_"Being selected to fly space shuttles is like getting hit by lightning. It doesn't happen to everyone. It's a pretty competitive process. You gotta have a flawless record. Crashing an F-18, well, that's a pretty big flaw."_


	19. Chapter 19

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 19**

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It took Gibbs less than five seconds after LtCol Perry signed off before he figured out a plan of attack on the case. He turned to two-thirds of his team—he still couldn't figure out what Burke was doing on his team; as he told Vance every time he saw the director, she had to be the most worthless agent he had ever worked with—before he began speaking. "Wilson, call Camp Arifjan, tell them to stop maintenance on Colonel Perry's plane now. They can start again when a forensics specialist arrives."

"Gibbs?" Special Agent Dwayne Wilson asked, confused. Gibbs sighed.

"If someone tampered with the plane, they might have left evidence. The maintenance personnel might disturb if they don't know what they're looking for," McGee explained for him. Since that was exactly what Gibbs was thinking, he didn't bother vocalizing his agreement with those words. Wilson nodded his understanding and headed out of MTAC to go make that call.

"McGee, you're with me," he said instead. Turning to the communications specialist in MTAC, he instructed her, "Get Bahrain."

"You're calling Tony?" McGee asked, taking his turn to frown.

"Do you suggest we send Abby to Kuwait?" Gibbs asked. "DiNozzo's forensics people are closer."

"Oh. Right." McGee looked embarrassed and Gibbs sighed inwardly. Truth be told, he did miss having DiNozzo around as his senior field agent. The current SAC in Bahrain might have had an unorthodox way of doing things, but after a decade as Gibbs' senior field agent, he had pretty much figured out how to anticipate what Gibbs needed. McGee was still learning, and Gibbs could do with the inferiority complex and the mental comparisons to DiNozzo while he did so. "Oh. I don't know if this has anything do with our case, but DiNozzo's working a case of a missing JAG—"

"DiNozzo lost a lawyer?" Gibbs asked. He thought about that for a second and shrugged slightly. "Good for him."

"Uh, right, Boss. Anyway, Captain Rabb—"

"Rabb?" Gibbs asked with a frown. "The one I arrested for murder?"

"What?"

"Before you were on the team," Gibbs explained. "What does his missing lawyer have to do with our case?"

"Uh, could be nothing. It's probably nothing," McGee said. "But when I called Tomblin about this case to see if she heard any chatter or knew anything, she mentioned that Rabb used to be a fighter pilot. She said it's just a coincidence—"

"You know what I think of coincidences, McGee," Gibbs interrupted.

"Right. And that's what I told Tomblin. So—"

"Sir? I have Bahrain," the communications specialist interrupted.

"Put it on the screen," Gibbs ordered, replacing his headset over his ears.

Seconds later, the tired-looking Bahrain SAC appeared on the screen, leaning back in his desk chair in front of a large picture window, revealing a dark sky behind him. _"Boss! McGoo! Oh, I've missed you guys! Don't get me wrong—I love Bahrain, and now that Ziva's here, it's a lot better—"_

"Got something for you, DiNozzo," Gibbs interrupted.

_"And there it is again,"_ DiNozzo mused. Gibbs couldn't help but smile. _"Don't know if you've noticed, Boss—"_

"Not your boss anymore, DiNozzo."

_"Yeah, after ten years of calling you 'Boss', it's not going to change overnight. What'dya need?"_

"Two Hornets crashed in the Indian Ocean—"

_"Not to interrupt what sounds like an opening line of a great joke, Boss, but Tomblin already gave me the big picture. It's late and Ziva probably has dinner for me at home again. And I don't think Freiler's seen any of his dozen kids all week, so if we can just skip the intro and get straight to the first great action scene, we'd all appreciate it."_

Well, the movie references hadn't gotten any less annoying in the last month. "The squadron leader's power went out on his plane, probably the same way the power went out for the pilot who crashed. The plane's at Camp Arifjan. Need a forensic scientist to check out the plane before maintenance gets to it."

_"And Abby doesn't want to go to Kuwait?"_ DiNozzo joked. _"Sure, I'll send someone over. Is the agent afloat from the carrier on the case?"_

"We're going to ask him to check out the maintenance crew aboard," McGee chimed in.

_"Yeah, that makes sense."_

"How're things, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked. His former field agent shrugged.

_"Hanging in there, I guess. Still one agent short. Don't have the time to look through folders and pick one. I'm starting to get threats from Vance, says he's going to just send someone here and I'll have to deal with whoever it is."_

"Careful," McGee joked. "You might end up with our probie. She's pretty worthless." She was actually worse than worthless, but Gibbs wasn't going to correct McGee.

_"I'm trying to get Tomblin to come back, but she doesn't seem all that interested,"_ DiNozzo commented.

"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me," McGee replied. "Speaking of Tomblin, she told me about your case—"

_"And you think they're related,"_ DiNozzo finished for him. Gibbs had to admire how well DiNozzo had stepped into the supervisory role, anticipating questions and comments before they had been fully asked. But then again, he did serve under Gibbs for the better part of a decade; hard not to learn something in that time. _"I don't know, McGiggle,"_ the new SAC in Bahrain continued. _"I had that same thought. Rabb was a Tomcat pilot when he was flying, but he did a stint working for the CIA and qualified on the Hornet and some other planes. He took off from our airstrip for parts unknown in a classified plane, which has that CIA stench all over it, but as Ziva pointed out to me, it doesn't really make sense. If we're saying that the cases are related, and we're saying the CIA took Rabb, then that would mean the CIA had something to do with the Hornets crashing, but—"_

"There's no reason for the CIA to crash two perfectly good Hornets on a training exercise in the Indian Ocean," Gibbs finished for his former senior field agent.

_"Right-o, Boss."_

"But why would anyone want to crash two perfectly good Hornets?" McGee asked with a frown. From the other side of the globe, DiNozzo gave an exaggerated shrug.

_"That's all you, McGoody-Two-Shoes. I'll lend you some lab people, but I've got my own case to run. You can't expect me to be doing your work anymore."_

"Tony, you never really—"

"Thanks for the help, DiNozzo," Gibbs interrupted, before McGee and DiNozzo could get into an international argument over who did the most work back when they were on the same team. "Get some sleep. Tell Ziva we said hi."

_"Will do, Boss. Good luck with the case. Keep me posted. And McComplains-A-Lot, keep your people in line. That's the senior field agent's job."_

"Right, Tony," McGee sighed.

After ending the second videoconference in a row, Gibbs realized for the first time that McGee had been carrying a folder since he arrived. "What've you got, McGee?" he asked, nodding toward the offending documents.

"Oh," his senior field agent, looking down as if forgetting that he was carrying anything. "Captain McNamee's medical records from this hospitalization. Dr. Aachen printed them off for me. I was going to give them to Ducky, get a second opinion." He shrugged. "It was just a thought."

"And a good one, too," Gibbs replied. Might as well throw him a bone; he wasn't that bad of a senior field agent. "I'll go with you."

To the surprise of both agents, they found not two people down in the morgue, but three, and all three were alive. "Gracy," Gibbs said in surprise, addressing the uniformed Army major standing with his medical examiner and Palmer in front of the light box for x-rays.

"Gibbs," she replied, sounding tired and frustrated, a tone she usually saved for the end of a long day when her kids were picking on each other.

"Wasn't aware we had a case that required an Army medical examiner."

"You don't," she replied. "At least, not that I know of. I'm here strictly for administrative purposes." She rolled her eyes. Like him, she despised the red tape that went along with her job. "I'm wearing my Deputy Armed Forces Medical Examiner hat today. I have to do an inspection on all the AFME labs in the National Capital Area by the end of the month. Today, I get NCIS. Did you need Ducky?"

McGee held up the folder he had been carrying. "Uh, it's nothing urgent, just a second opinion—"

"Is this about the Hornet pilot Abigail was telling me about over tea?" Dr. Donald Mallard, the medical examiner at NCIS, asked. "I would be much interested in seeing the file."

"Uh, it can wait until after you're done with Dr. Gracy—"

"I don't mind," Sonja Gracy interrupted, shrugging a shoulder. "Looking at something medical'll be a nice change from this administrative crap. What've you got?"

McGee glanced over at Gibbs as if asking his permission to shrug; the supervisory agent just shrugged. No use keeping it from her; it wasn't as if it was anything she didn't have access to, anyway. Her job as the Deputy AFME meant that she had access to all medical records in the DoD. "Uh, two Hornets—F-18's—crashed in the Indian Ocean," McGee explained for Gracy's benefit. "One of the pilots died, but the other one is hospitalized at Bethesda."

"Walter Reed," Gracy corrected absently as she looked over Ducky's shoulder while the elderly medical examiner began flipping through the pages. Gibbs rolled his eyes at the name; everyone associated with the Army seemed to like to rub in the fact that the new tri-service military hospital—which was located on a Navy base—was named after their most famous physician. "That's quite the shoulder injury," Gracy commented. "Do we have x-rays?"

"You should be able to bring it up on that computer, my dear," Ducky said, indicated the computer behind them. "Hmm," he murmured.

"What?" McGee asked.

"Oh," Ducky said, not realizing he had vocalized that aloud. "Captain McNamee's blood counts are not what I would expect for a healthy young woman." Dr. Gracy leaned over his shoulder again and frowned.

"They're not too far off," she finally said. "Whites are a bit high and platelets a bit low. Could be anything. I can show it to one of the hematopathologists, if you think it's something."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," Ducky agreed. "Do you have that x-ray?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." The two pathologists turned to the computer monitor.

"Well, that is quite interesting," Ducky finally said after a moment of both silently staring.

"What is?" McGee asked.

"Lotta shoulder injuries in this one," Gracy answered for him. She pointed a few areas near the shoulder joint. "There's a significant amount of scar tissue here, here, and here. She's probably dislocated it several times, and it looks like she's had at least one previous rotator cuff repair."

"How did she injure it?" Ducky asked.

"Uh, while trying to eject," McGee replied. The two doctors turned to each other again.

"That doesn't usually happen," Gracy finally said.

"Not in my experience," Ducky agreed. "I suppose it is likely that her history of previous injuries contributed."

"She a gymnast or something?" Gracy asked. "You don't usually see these kind of injuries outside of that, even in baseball players."

"She used to dive in college," McGee replied. "She might have been a gymnast before that."

"Best divers always were," Gracy said, more to herself than anyone else. As a former collegiate swimmer, she'd probably know.

"What was it you were saying about the blood counts, Duck?" Gibbs asked.

"Oh, it's likely nothing," Ducky replied

"But you thought it could be," Gibbs pressed.

"Well, it's just that these are closer to what I would expect in a middle-aged smoker, not a thirty-year-old woman who flies fighter jets."

"I doubt she smokes," McGee said quickly.

"Well, yes, ordinarily, I would agree that smoking and flying above ten thousand feet without the possibility of pressurization don't mix, but there was this one pilot back when—"

"It's consistent with chronic carbon monoxide exposure," Gracy interrupted, shooting Gibbs an amused look; she probably guessed that he was about to interrupt Ducky and ask him to get to the point. "I'd have to talk to a hematopathologist—someone who looks at blood samples for a living—to be sure, but that would be my guess."

"But how would she be exposed to carbon monoxide?" McGee asked, frowning. "They're breathing oxygen when they're at altitude..." His voice trailed off, his eyes widening as he processed that piece of information.

"Unless her oxygen's been tampered with," Gibbs finished for him. He studied the younger agent for a minute. "Next time you visit your former student at Bethesda, see if you can figure out why someone wants her dead."


	20. Chapter 20

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 20**

_A/N: A bit of a long chapter, but not really much case (or team) related in it. It's mostly just Tomblin, but I like Tomblin (which is why I wrote it). Anyway, I'm not sure when your next chapter will be. I'm going into Walter Reed (the old Walter Reed; the new one won't open until Sept 2011) for eye surgery in a couple of hours. Nothing major; just getting my very poor vision fixed so I can stop wearing contacts. The point of saying that was just to inform you that as soon as I'm up for staring at a computer screen again, you'll get a new chapter._

_

* * *

_

Special Agent Kim Tomblin waited until Jeff was back in a drug-induced slumber in their bed—well, technically, it was his bed, but since she lived there now too, and helped him pick out the bed and the mattress years before when they returned from the deployment they shared, the distinction wasn't really that important to her—before she looked up a home phone number in London and began the long and confusing process of dialing it.

_"This is Sarah Rabb,"_ the woman answered after the second ring. Tomblin cleared her throat slightly.

"Hello, ma'am, this is Special Agent Kim Tomblin, NCIS. I believe Special Agent DiNozzo told you that I'd be calling?"

_"Yeah, he mentioned it."_ The woman's voice was cold; Tomblin couldn't say she blamed her. She'd be less than happy with anyone associated with NCIS if they managed to lose Jeff. Unfortunately, she was all too familiar with what Mrs. Rabb was going through. It had barely been over a month since Jeff was kidnapped and nobody knew where he was. _"I don't see what talking to another agent is supposed to accomplish. I've already told both Agents DiNozzo and Freiler everything I know."_

"I understand, ma'am," Tomblin said diplomatically. Based on her research, Mrs. Rabb had been a lieutenant colonel before she left the Marine Corps; no reason to treat this any differently than she would a conversation with any other lieutenant colonel. "I was hoping I could help you."

_"Unless you know where Harm is, I don't see how you can help."_

Yeah, definitely a former lieutenant colonel; Tomblin would recognize that attitude anywhere. "I was the special agent in charge of the investigation that Captain Rabb is supposed to be prosecuting. But I think Agent DiNozzo also thought it would be easier for you to relate to me."

_"Because you're a woman?"_ Mrs. Rabb asked sarcastically.

"Because I'm a former Marine officer who lives with a sailor who was recently abducted by a group of terrorists."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. _"What happened?"_ Mrs. Rabb finally asked.

"He's a little dinged up, but fine." Tomblin glanced at the closed bedroom door as if she could see through it and confirm for herself that Jeff was, in fact, fine. "The same team that's working on your case was the team that found him." That wasn't quite true—Ziva David was no longer working for NCIS, and Gibbs and McGee weren't part of the search for Rabb, but it was close enough. "Ma'am, if there's anything—"

_"The worst part of this is that it doesn't surprise me at all."_ Tomblin blinked at the interruption. _"We've known each other for more than fifteen years, and this is definitely not the first time he's gotten himself into trouble. I hoped that having kids at home would make him a little bit more careful, but I'm not really surprised that it didn't."_

"Ma'am, are you saying that you think your husband is somehow intentionally involved in something?" Again, there was a pause on the other end.

_"I don't know if I'd say 'intentionally,'"_ Mrs. Rabb finally said. _"I read in the news that there was an F-18 crash not too far from Bahrain?"_

"That's right, ma'am," Tomblin confirmed. "Two Hornets collided on a training mission in the Indian Ocean."

_"Is that all there is to that case?"_ Tomblin was beginning to get the distinct impression that she was being cross-examined, and had to remind herself that she was dealing with a lawyer.

"I can't comment on an on-going case, ma'am," she replied.

_"So this is an NCIS case, which means you suspect that there's something more to it than just a training exercise gone bad."_

"Ma'am, I can't confirm or deny that."

_"You don't have to."_ Tomblin was getting the distinct impression that she had somehow lost an argument she hadn't realized she was having. _"If Harm found out there was something he could do to help a pilot, he would do it."_

"Ma'am, are you saying that Captain Rabb was tipped off about the crash?"

_"I don't know, Agent Tomblin,"_ Mrs. Rabb replied. _"What I am saying is that if he was, he wouldn't just be sitting around. You find out who caused those planes to crash, you're going to find my husband."_

Tomblin sighed and wondered if Mrs. Rabb had been talking to McGee; they seemed to have this same conviction that the two seemingly-unrelated cases were related. "You've got two very good teams working on those cases, ma'am. We're going to find your husband."

Her promise was still ringing in her ears as she hung up the BlackBerry and set it on the coffee table, leaning back on the couch with a heavy sigh. When she agreed with the anti-terrorism expert position DiNozzo and Vance came up with to get her stationed in San Diego with Jeff, she never imagined it would be like this.

She had barely taken a breath when her phone rang again. "Oh, you are fucking kidding me," she muttered darkly, reaching forward to pick up the phone again to see that it was her brother. "Great. Just what I needed," she muttered to herself as she accepted the call. "Hey, Kevan."

_"You sound like shit."_

"Wow, Kev. You should become a motivational speaker."

_"Yeah, I know, right? I need to talk to Cunningham."_

Tomblin groaned audibly. "C'mon, Kev," she complained. "He just had surgery yesterday. He's asleep, thanks to Percocet or OxyContin or whatever it was they gave him this time. Can't it wait?"

There was a long pause on the other end. _"Meghan had her doctor's appointment today,"_ he finally said, and she could have kicked herself; she completely forgot that Kevan told her the week before that his wife had a positive pregnancy test.

"Everything okay?" she asked when he didn't elaborate further. This time, her words were met with a heavy sigh.

_"It's twins,"_ he finally said, making her blink in surprise.

"Holy shit," she managed.

_"Yeah, I know. The curse of the Tomblin twins continues. At least one set a generation, right?"_ There was a strangely high number of identical twins in the Tomblin family; in addition to Kim's oldest two brothers, Kanten and Karsten, there were her aunts—her father's older sisters—her grandfather and his twin brother, who died of a farming accident as a kid, and her great-grandfather and great-great-uncle, neither of whom she met. And those were just the ones she knew of. _"Fuck, Kim. I've already got two kids; how the fuck am I supposed to be able to afford four? Clothes, food, college—"_

"Hey, Mom and Dad managed four. On an enlisted Marine's salary. Face it—you're in a much better place financially than that. Yeah, the economy sucks, but you're still the best mechanic in the better part of two counties. You don't have a mortgage, you can always make the kids enlist or take ROTC scholarships like all of us did, and if they want food, well, you've got two hundred acres of apples right outside your back door."

Kevan gave a bitter chuckle. _"Yeah. Or something. I don't know how Meg's gonna feel about me encouraging our daughters to enlist, though."_

"Nothing she can do about it, Kev. The Corps' in the Tomblin blood. Just like twins." She glanced at the bedroom door again and sighed. "I don't see what this has to do with Jeff, though."

Another pause on the other end of the phone line. _"They did an ultrasound at the doctor's office,"_ he said, seeming reluctant about the words. _"Apparently, it's a type of identical twins with a lotta problems."_

"So, your wife is pregnant with Kanten and Karsten, part two?"

He chuckled at his sister's attempt at humor before becoming serious again. _"It's something with the placenta or the amniotic fluid or some shit like that. I just need to talk to a doctor who can dumb it down to a leatherneck's level so I'll stop freaking out about it."_

She sighed again, again looking at the bedroom door. She understood the request; even though Jeff was a pediatrician, she needed him to explain things to do her whenever her grandfather ended up in the hospital, just so she knew in layman's terms what was happening. "I'll go see if he's awake," Tomblin said reluctantly. "But I'm not waking him up if he's not."

_"Thanks, Kim."_ And that's how she knew just how much Kevan was freaking out; he didn't thank anyone for anything, unless he was being sarcastic.

She carried the BlackBerry into the darkened bedroom. "Jeff?" she asked hesitantly, receiving a groan in response.

"Yeah?" he asked, his voice thick with sleep. He turned to face her and she held up the phone.

"It's Kevan," she said. "He needs to talk to you."

He groaned again, burying his head in his pillow. "Tell your brother we'll discuss whether or not I'll be making an honest woman out of you after I'm no longer on narcotic pain meds."

"Ha," she replied dryly. Truth be told, her entire family loved Jeff, despite the whole living-in-sin thing. "Meghan had her first prenatal appointment."

Jeff groaned as he used his arm not currently in a cast to pull himself into a seated position on the bed. He rubbed his face with his good hand before nodding slightly. "Okay. I'm ready." Kim put the phone on speaker and sat next to him on the bed.

"I got Jeff on speaker, Kev," she said.

_"Good deal,"_ the former Marine sergeant's disembodied voice said from the phone's speakers. _"Hey, Cunningham, how's it going?"_

"I've been better," Jeff replied.

_"Yeah. I lived with Kim for thirteen years. I understand the feeling."_

"Thanks, Kev," Kim said dryly, earning chuckles from both men. She gave Jeff a mock glare, earning her that same grin that made her fall in love with him years before.

"So Meghan had her prenatal appointment?" Jeff prompted.

_"Yeah,"_ Kevan replied. He paused for a few seconds. _"It's twins."_

"Congrats."

_"Yeah. Or something. Guess I can't be too surprised; I just hoped when neither of the twins had twins that Kim'll be the one having them."_

"Thanks, Kev," Kim repeated. "I'm flipping you off, by the way." Jeff chuckled at the upraised middle finger directed at her BlackBerry.

"So other than doubling the number of future Marines you'll be raising and confirming the whole Tomblin twinning phenomenon, what's the deal?"

_"Fuck if I know,"_ Kevan replied to Jeff's question. _"Our doc did an ultrasound and all that shit, did a lot of 'hmm'ing and 'oh'ing and all that and got us an appointment with this OB in Wenatchee."_

"Okay," Jeff said slowly, "except I know that there's no fucking way you or anybody else with Tomblin blood would let your doctor get away with just saying 'hmm' and 'oh'."

_"Yeah,"_ Kevan admitted, and Kim couldn't help but smile at the image of her large and tattooed brother intimidating some nerdy family medicine doctor in the clinic in Brewster. _"He tried explaining, but I caught maybe every fifth word he said. Something about muumuu twins or something like that."_

Kim caught Jeff struggling to keep from smiling at Kevan's words. "MoMo twins?" Jeff finally managed.

_"Sure, that could be it."_

"Okay," Jeff replied. "Monochorionic-monoamniotic monozygotic twins."

_"What the fuck?"_

This time, Jeff laughed out loud. "Sorry. It's not really funny, I guess. It's a set of identical twins that share a placenta and an amniotic sac. That's the water that breaks in labor."

_"Yeah, I already got two kids. I know that much. So what's the big deal?"_

Jeff made a face. "It's been a long time since I've done OB," he said warningly, "so all I know is the neonatology side of things—after the babies are born—and that's definitely not my strong suit of pediatrics. Just off the top of my head, MoMo twins have the highest complication rates among multiples. Since they share an amniotic sac, the cords can get in each other's way. If a cord gets wrapped around a limb or a neck or something, it can act like a tourniquet and completely shut of blood flow. Not only that, but since the cord is how the baby gets blood and nutrition, one baby squeezing or lying on the cord of the other can lead to fetal demise."

_"So one kid can kill the other?"_

"Sounds kinda like Kanten and Karsten," Kim chimed in.

_"Yeah, no shit. So what the fuck do we do?"_

"Well, first thing is go to that OB in Wenatchee," Jeff said. "And if he or she isn't trained in high-risk OB, you find one who is. I don't know if they have one in Wenatchee; you might have to go to Spokane." Kim was actually proud of him; he was naming off eastern Washington towns like he was the one who grew up there. "Probably going to have weekly appointments—"

_"Okay, stop. Wenatchee is an hour and a half away. Spokane's three. Either way, that's a lot of time to take to drive to the doctor."_

"Your kids, Kevan."

_"Fuck. Okay. What else?"_

"Situation normal is to be admitted for inpatient care at twenty-six or twenty-eight weeks, with strict bedrest until birth. Birth is usually scheduled c-section after thirty-two weeks." Jeff frowned slightly, collecting his thoughts. "NICUs are rated by the gestational age of the babies they can take care of. Most NICUs can take care of thirty-two weekers. If Meghan is going to be at a hospital after twenty-six weeks, she needs to be at a hospital that has a NICU that can take care of twenty-six weekers, just in case. I know you're not going to find that in Wenatchee. Spokane is the closest you'll possibly find one, but you might have to go to Seattle."

_"You're fucking kidding me, right?"_

"Right. Because I have such a sense of humor about pediatric medical care," Jeff said sarcastically. "I know it sucks, Kevan, but it's what you have to do."

_"And Mom went through this?"_

"At nineteen?" Kim added. She couldn't even imagine having to deal with anything Jeff was talking about, especially at nineteen years old with a husband in Vietnam.

"No way to know what kind of twins Kanten and Karsten were," Jeff said. "They didn't do ultrasounds forty years ago. I know this isn't going to sound great, so, Kevan, sorry in advance, but how's your insurance?"

_"It covers literally everything,"_ Kevan said without missing a beat. _"It's the only reason I don't go private and work for myself, not with kids and how many appointments you fucking pediatricians make them get. Why?"_

"Weekly appointments and six to eight weeks of inpatient stay? That's going to be pretty expensive. If you didn't have insurance, I'd recommend re-enlisting just for the medical benefits."

_"As much as I loved Corps, I'm pretty fucking glad I don't have to resort to that."_

"Can't say I blame you. As much as I love Marines, I'm pretty fucking glad I don't have to be one." This time, it was Jeff who Kim flipped off. "And completely off the topic, how's Jack?" Kim felt her face flush with embarrassment; she didn't even think to ask Kevan how their grandfather was doing.

_"Better, I guess. He's being discharged tomorrow."_ There was a long pause. _"It's still not great,"_ Kevan continued. _"He doesn't seem that healthy. I guess that's not really a surprise after a second heart attack, right? When are you guys coming up to see him?"_

"Sometime after I can handle airports and airplanes again,"Jeff replied.

_"Well, make it soon,"_ Kevan demanded. _"I don't want the next time you guys visit to be for a funeral."_ Kim felt her eyes widen; although she knew that her grandfather was old and had lived a full life, both of her grandfathers had had so much of a presence in her life for as long as she could remember that she couldn't even imagine life without either of them.

"We'll do our best," Jeff said for her, taking her hand and squeezing it. "Anything else you need, Kevan?"

_"Nah, that was it. Thanks for talking things through for me. Get well soon, okay? And don't let my baby sister work too fucking hard."_

"Ha," Jeff said dryly. "Like I've ever had any control over that. I think she's working half a dozen cases right now." Kim made a face at him, but didn't contradict it; he was probably right. "And congratulations again. Keep me posted on everything, and don't hesitate with any questions."

_"Will do. Thanks, man."_ They all said their good-byes and hung up their respective phones; with her brother now out of communications range, Kim collapsed against Jeff, careful not to disturb his injuries. He kissed the top of her head as he draped his still-cast-clad arm over her chest, pulling her to him.

"I love you, you know," he said. "Even when you work twenty-four hours a day."

"Says the doctor," she replied sarcastically. "I love you, too. And I'm sorry I haven't been around as much as I should be."

He shook his head at her words. "You're here. That's enough for me; that's all I've wanted for five years." He tightened his grip on her. "You'll get the bad guy, Kim. I know you will."


	21. Chapter 21

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 21**

_A/N: I woke up this morning without pain (for the first time since Thursday) and able to see (for the first time in as long as I can remember), so I'm celebrating by giving you a chapter. Writing is still slow, so I can't guarantee a timely next chapter, but you do get one today. Enjoy!_

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_

Ziva's third day of looking at apartments started much the same as the first two: poorly. "This will not work," she declared within two minutes of stepping into the morning's third apartment. Across the small living room, the real estate agent frowned.

"Do I need to guess what is wrong with this one?" she asked sarcastically.

"With how many explanations I have given you, you should be able to."

The native Bahraini sighed as she began looking around. "I am thinking that it is a bit small," she finally said.

"Yes," Ziva replied simply. It also had small windows and a kitchen barely large enough for one person, but there was no use getting into that now.

"In two and a half days, we have only seen one place that you would even conceive of living," the real estate agent said. "But that one, you said was too large. I am finding it difficult to find one that is in your exact size range."

Ziva frowned. "The one that I was fond of was a house," she pointed out.

"A gated compound," the realtor corrected. Ziva didn't bother telling her that calling a compound actually made it worse.

"It had two stories, three bedrooms, and a swimming pool," she said instead. "That is a bit excessive."

"It was gated, which meets your security requirements." Ziva snorted at that; she required more than just a gate for security. Gates provided little more than the illusion of security, which in itself was more dangerous than having no gate at all. "It has enough bedrooms, large windows with a view of the beach, three balconies, and a modern kitchen with new appliances. Was there any wrong with it, other than the fact that it did not share a wall with another person's home?"

Ziva opened her mouth to respond and closed it when nothing came to mind. Although the house was a lot more than they were looking for, it did have everything they were looking for, which was a lot more than could be said for any of the apartments she had seen, or the one they were currently living in.

She just still hadn't figured out how to bring it up to Tony to make him think that living in a house was his idea, though.

* * *

The NCIS special agent in question was exactly in the same place he had been for the last several days: at his desk, on his computer, trying to find some sort of clue that would point in the direction Rabb had gone.

He was one dead lead away from going home and running a Bond marathon. Surely 007 had come across a situation like this and had some sort of advice to offer.

DiNozzo glanced up hopefully when Freiler walked into the field agent office, his hopes falling just as fast with the look on his junior agent's face. "Sorry, Agent DiNozzo," Freiler said as he collapsed into his desk chair, sounding just as tired as DiNozzo felt. "The analyst division has been working on finding that plane, and they've got nothing."

"Planes don't just disappear, Freiler. Neither do captains. Or, unfortunately, lawyers."

"Yeah," Freiler agreed. "I'm sure the plane's somewhere. I just don't know where. And I'm sure Captain Rabb is somewhere, too, but—"

"You just don't know where," DiNozzo finished for him. "Thanks. I got it."

"I can tell you where the plane's _not_," Freiler offered, pulling something up on his computer. "It's not at any international airport in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, any country in the EU—"

"You're really not helping," DiNozzo interrupted with a sigh. "Did you see the email from Tomblin?"

"About the conversation with Mrs. Rabb? Yes, sir, I read that."

"You don't need to call me 'sir', Freiler."

"Right. Sorry."

"And don't apologize." He stopped and looked up, frowning. "Who am I?"

"Who are you?"

"Right. Who am I?"

"Uh, NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo?"

"Okay. Good. I was worried that I had somehow become Gibbs."

"Ah. Right." Freiler continued to watch him for a long minute. "Was there something about the email that got your attention?"

"Oh." With the temporary identity crisis, DiNozzo had forgotten that he was going to say anything. "The wife seems to think that our case and our little McGoo's case are related."

"Huh?"

DiNozzo had forgotten that Freiler didn't know about the case the headquarters MCRT was working on or the nicknames he gave his former junior agent. "There was a Hornet crash in the Indian Ocean a few days ago. Gibbs and company are working the case."

"Oh. Why does Mrs. Rabb think they're related?"

"Because believing that is better than believing that your husband was kidnapped by terrorists?"

"I guess that's a good point. Is there anything about that case you want me to work on?"

DiNozzo sighed again and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. He didn't know enough about that case to answer that question, so he chose to ignore it. "Anything new on the embezzlers?" With all of this attention focused on Rabb and the Zazi case, they had been neglecting all of their old cases.

They really needed another field agent.

"Uh, we got the results from the Secret Service on the bills…" His voice trailed off at the sudden and unexpected appearance of Mossad Officer Ziva David in the office doorway. "Uh…"

"We can get back to this later, Freiler," DiNozzo informed his junior agent. He turned his attention to the Israeli woman standing just inside his office. "Hi."

"Hello," she replied, a smile on her face. Well, that was a welcome change from the exhausted glare she had been wearing halfway through the first day of searching for apartments. She held up the bag she had brought in with her. "Have you had lunch yet?"

"I don't know if I've had breakfast yet," DiNozzo admitted. He glanced in his garbage can to see a pile of empty coffee cups. "I've had coffee, though."

"Not even Gibbs can survive on coffee alone, Tony," Ziva said as she swung Tomblin's old chair around to the front of Tony's desk.

"I don't know," DiNozzo said thoughtfully. "There were times I'm pretty sure he did. I think he's got more coffee in his bloodstream than blood."

"That would explain quite a lot," Ziva replied with a nod. She reached into the bag from the deli and handed over a sandwich. "How is it going?"

"It's not," he replied grimly. "How's the housing search going? Find any you can see us living in?"

She looked uncertain, which always made him nervous. "There was one the other day that is a possibility," she began.

"So what's wrong with it?"

"What makes you assume that there is anything wrong with it?"

"If there wasn't, you would have signed a lease already."

"I would not sign a lease without you seeing the place where we would be living first."

"Really?" DiNozzo asked with a frown. "'Cause that sounds exactly like something you would do."

"Do you want to go see it?"

"Now?"

Ziva shrugged. "We cannot wait until you are done at work for the day, because the realtor will likely be asleep at that point. We might as well go now."

"Okay," he agreed as he stood from his chair. It wasn't as if he was accomplishing anything at the office anyway. "Let's go."

To his surprise, Ziva also stood, pulling her phone from her pocket and beginning a quick conversation in Arabic about seeing the place she liked with, he could only assume, their real estate agent.

And practically the next thing he knew, he was standing outside the realtor's car, gaping at a gated house. "_This_?" he asked. "This is the place you wanted me to see?"

"Yes," Ziva replied simply.

"But it's a house!"

"A villa compound," Ziva corrected, which actually just made the situation worse.

"You want to rent _a villa compound_," DiNozzo echoed. "What happened to the two-bedroom apartment idea?"

Ziva sighed and rolled her eyes. "Do you want to waste your lunch break standing outside complaining, or do you want to see it?"

"I don't know," DiNozzo said slowly. He was beginning to have flashbacks of another conversation about another house with another woman.

But this wasn't another woman. This was Ziva, the woman who changed her entire job and moved halfway across the world to live with him, the woman he once proposed to and might propose to again, if he ever figured out when 'the right time' was. "Yeah," he said reluctantly. "Let's go see it."

He had to admit, the house was nice. The three bedrooms were all large and brightly lit through the large windows, the living room and den were spacious and perfect for entertaining, the kitchen was large and fitted with brand-new appliances—something he knew was a 'must have' for Ziva—and, for crying out loud, the place had a pool in the backyard, somewhere where he could relax at the end of a long day, Ziva bringing him a cocktail—

No. This was ridiculous; it was a _house_, a house they definitely didn't need and he was pretty sure they couldn't afford. "Well?" Ziva prompted. "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" he repeated, feeling at the brink of panic. "What do I think? I think it's a _house!_"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, Tony, I do realize this."

His eyes darted over to the real estate agent before going back to Ziva, his voice lowering. "Ziva, this place has to be over 2000 dinars—"

"It is 2100," she interrupted.

"That's over five thousand dollars, Ziva! A month! There's no way I can afford—"

"You are not the only one who would be living here, Tony."

"Oh," he said sarcastically. "So you're saying Mossad pays their operatives enough to be able to rent three bedroom houses with a swimming pool along the beach in Bahrain?" She just raised her eyebrows at him. "Are you serious?" he demanded. "Just how much money do you make?"

"Enough to be able to rent a three bedroom house with a swimming pool along the beach in Bahrain," Ziva replied. "You should not be worried about the money, Tony."

"But it's a house!" he exclaimed again, too flustered by wondering just how much money Ziva made to form an argument more articulate than that. "Houses are for people like the Freilers, with three kids and another coming in a couple of weeks. We're just two people—." He cut himself off, a sudden thought occurring to him that was enough to make his recently-fed stomach turn in nervous anticipation. "We are just two people, right?"

"Who else did you think would be living with us?" Ziva asked, clearly confused.

"No, I mean, there isn't going to be… You're not…"

"Pregnant?" Ziva asked, beginning to catch onto the conversation. "No, Tony. I most definitely am not."

"Thank God," he replied in an exhale. He remembered what they were talking about and frowned. "You don't… I mean…"

"Want to be?" she asked, now sounding amused. "No, Tony. I do not want a child right now."

"Then what's with the house?"

"It is a nice house. It meets all of our requirements—." Her arguments were cut off by the sudden ringing of Tony's cell phone. His eyes didn't leave hers as he pulled the offending device out of his pocket and accepted the call.

"DiNozzo," he barked harshly. The word was met with several beats of silence, enough to make him check that the call was still active.

_"Uh, it's Freiler, sir,"_ his junior agent finally replied. DiNozzo was still too distracted by the house to bother to correct him. _"One of our analysts just found something, sir. I think we finally have a lead on the plane."_


	22. Chapter 22

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 22**

_A/N: Happy Black Friday to my fellow Americans! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and for all of you crazy shoppers out there who ventured out of the house at ungodly hours, I hope you found what you were looking for._

_

* * *

_

Even with stopping at red lights and the obligatory stop at the gate to show his ID, DiNozzo was back in the office in less than ten minutes, a fact he filed in the back of his head; that house, while it was a house, was really close to the office, and that was a definite plus. He didn't want to have to deal with driving across the entire island in those times when he was called into the office in the middle of the night. Or when he was stumbling home for a quick nap in the middle of one of these marathon cases, like the one he was currently working.

"Freiler," he barked as he strode into the room. "What've you got?"

"Wow," the junior agent said, glancing at his watch. "That was quick. I thought you and Ziva were out looking at places?"

"Yeah, came here straight from there."

"That was really quick. In Juffair?"

"Yeah."

"Nice. Bryn and I looked at a couple of places there, but anything the size we need was way out of our price range. So the commute's a bit longer, but at least the kids—"

"Freiler," DiNozzo interrupted. The last thing he needed at the moment was a reminder of Ziva's bombshell of how much more money she made than him. "The plane?"

"Right." The junior agent gestured DiNozzo over to his computer. "It's a bit of a long story," he warned.

"I'll take the Cliff Notes version, if you've got one."

"Uh, not really." He pulled up a file. "This is Benson Loyd. He's an agent of the—"

"CIA," DiNozzo finished for him. "I'd recognize that sour taste in my mouth anywhere. What does Agent Loyd of the CIA have to do with our case?"

"Uh, could be nothing, but it could be something." Freiler frowned, obviously trying to get a handle on how to present this. "So, the Iranian government is claiming that they caught Loyd flying a surveillance plane in their airspace and shot him down—"

"What?" DiNozzo interrupted. "I don't know if you know this, Freiler, but this is bad. As in, let's start a new war bad."

"Right. Which is why we're saying that the Iranian government is making stuff up. But the Iranians claim that they have irrefutable proof of espionage activities."

"In what form?"

"They're not saying," Freiler said apologetically. "But they did release photos of the plane." With a few keystrokes, he had a photo of the remains of a plane in what appeared to be a mountainous landscape.

"Do we know it's ours, or is this another ploy from the Iranian government?" He was unfortunately familiar with ploys from the Iranian government, still remembering all too clearly how well they had set up Ziva years before. And how it took Gibbs to get her out of it.

"Uh, can't say for sure, based just on this photo," Freiler admitted. "It's a Cessna Citation V, which is used by the U.S. government, including both the Army and the Marine Corps. I'm not sure if the CIA uses them as well, but it's also used by a lot of other governments, including Pakistan."

"Which shares a border with Iran."

"Yeah."

"Never heard of a Cessna being used for surveillance or espionage."

"Right," Freiler agreed. "It's not exactly a good choice for either. It's obviously not stealth, it doesn't have as high of maximum speed as other planes, it's not as maneuverable, doesn't carry weapons—"

"I get it, Freiler," DiNozzo interrupted. He frowned as he tried to figure out where to go with this new information. "Call the CIA," he finally said. "It's probably going to be useless, but we might as well try. Get anything you can on this Agent Loyd, find out if he has any ties to Captain Rabb. Find out if he's having financial problems of any sort or sudden appearances of extra money in his bank account and might be freelancing or, even worse, on the bankroll of another government. See if you can get anyone there to say anything about whether or not they have any Cessnas, and if so, try to account for them." He frowned again. "Actually, hold on that for now. Nobody's going to be telling you anything. This needs to be dealt with by somebody higher than you."

"You're going to be calling the CIA?" Freiler asked as DiNozzo made his way back to his desk and picked up his phone.

"Not me," DiNozzo said with a slight smile as he dialed a number that was becoming unfortunately familiar, thanks to all-too-frequent calls about the still-empty desk in his office. "Director Vance is."

* * *

Captain Harmon Rabb, Jr. had no idea where he was and no idea how long he had been there, and knew that was entirely intentional. Unfortunately, he had no idea who was intentionally keeping him in the dark. Literally or figuratively.

He recognized a Company Cessna on the runway in Bahrain immediately, flashbacks of his time flying people he couldn't talk about to places he couldn't talk about still vivid in his memory, even years later. 'Agent Brown' led him right up the stairs and into the back, despite Rabb's wish that he could be the one in the cockpit.

He didn't know a single pilot who enjoyed relinquishing that piece of control, and that included himself.

It wasn't long into the flight before he realized that nothing was quite right. 'Agent Brown' had mentioned an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, but they were going east, the direction he had expected to be going when he was on his way to Afghanistan.

And then they were forced to land, and he was pretty sure he was in Iran. That was the last thing he remembered before waking up in an eight-by-eight gray cell.

He had learned about torture techniques during his Survival, Evasion, Rescue, and Escape training, an essential and grueling portion of pilot training that he had hoped to never have to use; unfortunately, he recognized a few of them here. There was solitary confinement—he hadn't seen another person, not even a guard, since he woke up—disorientation to time—no windows, no patters to the meals, the watch that Mac gave him last Christmas removed—sensory deprivation—he was living in a soundproof gray box—and he didn't even want to think of what was to come.

He couldn't imagine how his father lived through years of this.

The problem was, he couldn't figure out what they might want. He may be a highly ranked officer, but with the exception of the very rare antiterrorism case—the one he was supposed to be prosecuting in Afghanistan would only be his third since his promotion to captain—very little of what he did actually required his Top Secret clearance, and hardly any of that was actually relevant to national security.

In other words, whoever currently had him had captured the wrong captain.

In his free time—which thus far was endless—he tried to make sense of the entire situation, tried to figure out who could want him and for what, tried not to think about how mad Mac was going to be with him. He had no idea if the story 'Agent Brown' had given him about the fighter squadron on the carrier being in trouble or not was true; at this point, he could only assume it was a ruse to lead him onto the Cessna.

Which led right back to the question: why did somebody go to all this trouble to capture him?

His first assumptions had been that it was related to the case he was supposed to be prosecuting, but that didn't seem to fit. From what he had read of the evidence against Abdul Hasan Zazi, the former Taliban leader didn't have the resources to kidnap a Navy captain on the runway of a naval base, not with a Cessna or any other plane. And his current environment didn't fit what he would expect had he been captured by someone from Waziristan; he was in a dull gray cell that was likely part of a larger prison, not some isolated cave somewhere.

Once he excluded Zazi from the possibilities, he was left with his first assumption when the plane was forced to land: that he was in Iran. The whole 'capture them and leave them in prison' that he was currently experiencing seemed to fit with the _modus operandi_ of the Iranian government as well. But again, with the exception of his rank and the security clearance he rarely used, he had no idea why the Iranian government would want him.

His internal musings were interrupted by the sudden appearance of another meal, as dull and tasteless as his previous meals had been. As he chewed thoughtfully on the rice dish, he was left with only one conclusion.

No matter where he was or why he was there, if he didn't get himself out and back in London soon, Mac was going to kill him.


	23. Chapter 23

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 23**

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* * *

**

Even though it was early—McGee still had no idea what prompted him to set his alarm clock for 0415—the new senior field agent of the NCIS headquarters MCRT decided to swing by Bethesda—Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he reminded himself—before heading down to the Navy Yard to begin what he was sure was going to be another frustrating day of work.

To his surprise, Harlan McNamee was already awake, sitting up in her hospital bed as someone in teal scrubs was drawing blood from her left elbow. "Uh, good morning," he said as he knocked on the open door.

"Hey, Tim," she replied, sounding much too chipper for 0500. "Morning labs," she said as an explanation, nodding her head toward the man in scrubs.

"Just one more tube," he said as pulled another one of the offending tubes from the pocket of his coat.

"No problem, HM2," McNamee replied cheerfully. She turned back to McGee. "So what brings you here this early? Don't NCIS agents ever sleep?"

"Doesn't seem like it," he said with a sigh. He waited until the corpsman was heading out of the room before speaking again. "What's with the lab work? Is there something wrong?"

"Oh, they get labs on everyone, every morning. It's quite the ordeal. Actually, they're running a bit late. They usually come around between 0400 and 0430."

"That's pretty early."

"Yeah, but the residents show up before 0500 to get started for the day, and they get really upset if they don't have lab results when they come in. One of the interns already came in this morning to ask if they had even drawn labs yet. He was pretty pissed when I told him they hadn't."

"They get here before 0500 every morning?"

"And usually stay pretty late, too. One of my friends from Hopkins is now a general surgery resident. Legally, they can't work more than eighty hours a week, but she says she's usually over that. It's another reason why I'm pretty sure I'll never go to medical school, despite my mother's not-so-subtle hints that I should." She shrugged her good shoulder. "But enough about that. What brings you in? Find anything on the case?"

"Not yet," he admitted, taking a seat in the chair Mrs. Leeman had been in the other day. "We think the same thing that happened to your plane happened to Colonel Perry's, as far as losing power. We sent a forensics specialist to Camp Arifjan to see if they can find anything in his plane."

She nodded slightly. "Tell them to focus on the primary electrical bus, or near that," she said. "I've been thinking of this—should be a relatively easy mental game for someone with a master's in aero/astro, but I guess that's what I get for not using that level of thinking very often. Use it or lose it, right? I spend all of my time around a bunch of poli sci majors who only know enough about their planes to know how to fly them. Anyway, the engines remained running, which is exactly as expected—the jet turbines essentially act as their own generators for the engines. I didn't try to see if I could shut them off manually, because, let's face it, while flying a couple thousand feet over the Indian Ocean isn't a time to experiment with the engines to see if you can shut them off when you don't have power anywhere else. But back to the primary bus. If the problem was with the alternator itself, it wouldn't cause an immediate and total power failure. That wouldn't happen until the battery was drained. Again, not something I've done in a real situation, but I'm pretty sure the battery has enough juice to last longer than half a second." She was gesturing with her arm not currently in a sling, something McGee remembered from when she was his student: she always talked with her hands, using gestures that had nothing to do with anything as she tried to explain back a concept or figure out how to state it so one of her classmates could understand. "So, if we exclude the engines and the alternator from our list of possibilities, the next step is the master switch. That's what connects the buses to the alternator. The first bus is the primary electrical bus. Makes sense, I guess—that the first is the primary. Um, most of the circuit breakers feed directly off the primary electrical bus, and each of those circuits goes off to power its individual component, like the radio or the lights or the nav system. Since everything went off at once, you're looking at either a failure of the primary bus, or simultaneous failures of every single circuit. I could probably calculate the odds of that happening, but I can tell you without doing the math—"

"That it's a pretty rare event," McGee finished for her. McNamee nodded.

"As in, so rare I've never heard of it happening," she told him. "And I spent a year doing nothing but learning about aircraft and how they work and how things go wrong."

"So the primary electrical bus?" McGee summarized. She nodded again.

"Sorry I didn't think of it sooner," she apologized. "I was so focused on the whole idea of this being external to the plane that I didn't go back to the basics."

"So the question is, how would someone tamper with the primary electrical bus in order to make it fail while in flight?"

"In two planes," Harley reminded him. She shrugged. "I'm guessing that's more up the forensics and crime-fighting alley than the flight side of things. Between the maintenance personnel and your forensics specialist, hopefully they find an answer to that. Maybe a timed charge directly to the bus? You know, something that would go off x number of minutes after the alternator is started."

"Or at a given altitude," McGee suggested.

"Yeah, that could work," McNamee agreed. "I don't really know much about bombs and triggers and everything."

"Fortunately, I do."

"Aww, McGee, I always did know you were a good person to have around."

He felt his face grow red with the teasing compliment and changed the subject. "Uh, a couple of our medical examiners were looking at your lab results—"

"A couple?" she interrupted. "Just how many medical examiners does NCIS have? No offense, but how do you have the caseload for a large medical examiner contingent?"

"Well, we only have one," he admitted, "but he's part of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner system, and one of the deputy… you know, that's not really important." Gibbs' need for concise explanations was definitely affecting him; now he was cutting himself off even without his boss present. "They were looking at the lab results and saw some abnormalities, and one of them suggested that you've been exposed to—"

"Carbon monoxide," Harley interrupted. "Yeah, my docs told me. They drew some blood yesterday to see if my carbon monoxide levels were still elevated. I'll ask for the results when the docs come in for their fifteen seconds of self-assurance that I'm still breathing." She frowned slightly. "It's been too long since I've done anything remotely related to BME; I don't even remember if there's some sort of nomogram that they could use to see how well the levels are going down or how they were or when I was exposed." She had that look of concentration on her face that McGee remembered from years ago, when she was trying to tackle a particularly difficult problem. "I guess that could go with the memory loss, couldn't it? And maybe why I was so tired the whole time I was on the _Bush_."

"Is that when it started? On the aircraft carrier?"

"The fatigue? I think so. But it's really hard to compare the two. We have completely different training schedules when we're away from Beaufort. Maybe I was tired because I was exposed to carbon monoxide, or maybe just because I was flying so many hours without a good sleep schedule. I really don't know. I don't think I was tired before we left, though. The day before we left for the _Bush_, we had a full day of work, went out for dinner, then the guys and I stayed at the bar until they closed. And then we flew fighter jets halfway across the world to the Indian Ocean, and I was just fine. And it wasn't just that night. Staying out like that is a perfectly normal thing for us. Now, that's not to say that I wasn't exposed to carbon monoxide before I left—." She cut herself off and started laughing. "And there I go, sounding like I'm from the South again. 'That's not to say that I wasn't.' Next you're going to see a big fake smile as I start describing things in the exact opposite of what they are and using words like 'lovely.'" She smiled and rolled her eyes. "I need to move away from the South once and for all. Atlanta, Lejeune, Beaufort… The only times I've managed to escape the South was four years in Baltimore and a year in Boston." She laughed slightly. "And that's not here nor there. Sorry."

"It's okay," McGee replied, finding himself smiling with her. He hadn't had much opportunity to talk to Harley outside of class twelve years ago, between the busy schedules they both had, his role as her TA, and him just being too nervous to even think about approaching her about anything that wasn't directly related to biomedical engineering, but he was really wishing that he had. Talking with her the last few days had been more than just a breath of fresh air and a relief from what he got every day at the office; it had been downright enjoyable.

Except for the fact that he was currently investigating her plane crash and trying to figure out who wanted her dead.

The mental reminder of the case brought him right back to earth and right back to the question he had been wishing he didn't have to ask. "So, where could the carbon monoxide have come from?" he asked, somewhat reluctantly. Instantly picking up on the change of mood, Harley also became serious.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I don't smoke and I don't spend a lot of time around smokers, so there goes the number one source of carbon monoxide exposure. I live in Beaufort, so I definitely don't have a faulty heating unit, because I don't really have a heating unit. I guess that leaves someone tampering with my oxygen, doesn't it? And I'm guessing that happened on the _Bush_."

"Any of the other pilots with any symptoms? Like being tired?"

She shrugged her shoulder. "I don't know," she admitted. "Like I said, we were worked pretty hard while we there. I think everyone was feeling it to some extent, but we didn't exactly sit around and bitch about how we were feeling."

"Right," McGee replied, remembering that she was one of the few women in a very male-dominated field, and the only one in her squadron. In some respects, she had to be tougher than everyone she was around. Including flying when someone was drugging her. "So, uh, why would somebody—"

"Want me dead?" she finished for him. For an instant, she had a scared and vulnerable expression on her face, but the next instant it was gone, her supremely confident exterior again intact. "I wish I knew that, Tim, I really do. When you figure it out, can you please let me know?"


	24. Chapter 24

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 24**

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* * *

**

McGee didn't even bother stopping by his desk or anything on the same floor as his bullpen when he arrived at NCIS, only taking the elevator from the parking garage to the level of Abby's lab. "Please tell me you have something, Abby," he said, not even pausing as he strode through the door.

"Wow," Abby commented, her eyes wide as she turned from her computer toward him. "That was really good. I mean, really, really good. It's not as good as Tony's, yet, but he's had a lot more years to practice. Considering you've only been the senior field agent for a month, I think you're well on your way."

"Well on my way to what, exactly?" McGee asked, thoroughly confused.

"Well, your Gibbs impression, of course," Abby replied, as if it should have been obvious. And in Abby's world, it probably was.

"Uh, I actually wasn't trying…" This was not the conversation he came down to here to have. "Have you heard anything from Kuwait?"

"About the plane?"

"We're not working any other cases, Abby."

"Well, technically, you're not, but I do the forensics for all of the teams in the DC area and serve as the forensics consultant for a bunch of other offices. Right now, there's a case in Norfolk—"

"Abby."

"But you don't care about that," she said in her usual bouncy manner. "So, the planes. Well, plane. There's only one in Kuwait. Nope. I haven't heard from Tony's guys."

"Tony's guys?"

"You know, the forensics guys from Bahrain. Tony's guys."

"Right. I went to Bethesda this morning to talk to Harley—"

"You're on a first name basis with the victim-slash-suspect?"

"She's not a suspect, Abby. Her plane crashed because she lost power and another pilot ran into her while flying." Getting defensive to Abby wasn't going to do him any good. "We knew each other back at Johns Hopkins, actually," he admitted.

"Like, knew each other, or _knew_ each other?"

"I was her TA."

"That didn't really answer the question, McGee."

He rolled his eyes. "I was just her TA. That's it. And there was no 'I'll do anything for an A' or anything like that. She didn't need to."

"Because you gave her an A anyway?"

"Because she _earned_ it!" This really was going nowhere. "We talked about the power going out in her plane," he said, moving on from Abby's strangely jealous-sounding questions. "She said that if someone was going to tamper with a plane to cause a power outage like what she experienced, it would probably be at the primary power bus. That's probably where they should focus the search."

"I'll pass that along," she said with a perfunctory nod. "Is there anything else you talked to _Harley_ about at five in the morning that's relevant to the case?"

"Uh, actually, yeah," he admitted. "Gracy and Ducky think she might have been exposed to carbon monoxide, and Harley—Captain McNamee—said it was probably when the squadron was on the carrier. She didn't think any of the other pilots were having problems."

"But she's the only woman," Abby pointed out. "So she's smaller than the other pilots, which means she has a smaller blood volume. Also, the respiratory rates and ventilation and perfusion rates are different for men and women. It's not a large difference, really, but there are some studies, mostly in journals of undersea medicine—"

"Abby."

"Right. Not relevant. If all of the pilots were exposed to a low-level of carbon monoxide for the same amount of time, Captain McNamee would probably have symptoms before any of the other pilots, just because of her physiology."

"Oh."

"Well, or she could have been the only one exposed," Abby continued, the expression on her face indicating that she was throwing him a bone. "So the question is, where would the oxygen supply have been contaminated, right?"

"Right."

"If it was all of them, it could be something faulty in the oxygen filling station. You should probably tell Agent Atkins on the _Bush _to check it out thoroughly. If it was just her tanks, than somebody would have to be intentionally adding carbon monoxide to her oxygen supply before the squadron took off," Abby pointed out. "That takes some serious patience. Poisoning, I mean. Well, I guess it depends on what the goal is with the poisoning. If the goal is to kill somebody and you don't care who finds out, then you can just use one large dose and be done with it, but then you're probably going to get caught, because criminals are stupid and they usually get caught. If you wanted to kill somebody and leave a lot less evidence, it takes smaller doses over a longer period of time, and you need to make sure they keep getting exposed and you have to monitor them and see how their symptoms are—"

"Have you put a lot of thought into this, Abby?"

"Only to the extent I need for work," she said as cheerfully as if she were discussing the proper technique to potting flowers, not killing somebody with an undetectable poison. "If you want to get them sick but don't want to kill them, that takes even more patience. You have to be careful not to give them too much, but if you give them too little, you're not going to be having any effect, and that pretty much ruins everything you've been trying to do. So you have to give them enough to make them sick, but not enough to make them dead. Or make anyone suspicious that you've been making them sick."

"That sounds like a lot of work."

"I agree," she said with a nod that sent her pigtails bouncing. "Which is why I think it's more likely that the entire squadron was exposed, but she was the only one who was showing symptoms. Well, showing symptoms yet. I'm sure if they stayed out there long enough—"

"Thanks, Abby," McGee interrupted, turning and heading for the door.

"That was good, too!" Abby called out after him. "Although Gibbs usually gives me a kiss on the cheek before he goes! McGee? Are you still there? McGee!"

* * *

McGee found Gibbs waiting by his desk when he made his way upstairs. "Glad you could join us, Elf Lord," the supervisory field agent said sarcastically, right before taking a sip from his coffee.

"Uh, I was downstairs getting an update from Abby," McGee replied. "And before that, I was at Bethesda talking to Harley. Captain McNamee." He really was going to have work harder on watching how he referred to the Hornet pilot. "I asked about the carbon monoxide—"

"She know who wants her dead?"

"Uh, no, Boss. But she thinks her symptoms started after the squadron reported to the _Bush_. She said the other pilots were tired, too, but probably not as much as she was. Uh, Abby and I tried to figure out where the carbon monoxide could be coming from—"

"So was someone trying to kill McNamee, or the entire squadron?"

"Uh, don't know, Boss. But Abby pointed out that if this was directed at McNamee, than someone's putting a lot of effort into making her too sick to fly. Or dead. If it was the entire squadron, it could have been an accident—uh, a malfunction in the oxygen filling tanks. I was about to call Agent Atkins—"

"Do it," Gibbs barked. He turned to the junior field agent. "Wilson, anything on Antonellis?"

"Still haven't found anything suspicious, Gibbs. But I'll keep looking." Gibbs gave an almost distracted nod to that before turning to Burke. He frowned at the probationary agent but didn't say anything before looking away and heading toward the elevator. Not surprisingly, Burke looked like she was about to burst into tears at the snub.

If she wanted to stay with NCIS, she needed to talk to someone about transferring her probationary period to one of the other MCRTs, like San Diego or Silverdale. And soon, before Gibbs got around to going upstairs to tell Vance she was fired.

In the meantime, she was still on the team, and there were still things—albeit very small things—that McGee could trust her to do. "Catherine," he said. "Can you call the medical department at Camp Arifjan and ask them to check all the pilots of Squadron 251 for carbon monoxide?" With how long it had been since any of them would have been exposed, it was definitely a long shot, but there was no point in not checking.

"Sure, Tim," she replied, swiping at her eyes before reaching for the phone. His primary senior field duties complete—filling Gibbs in on the case, exasperating him, and finding something to keep the probie occupied—he took a seat at his desk and opened up his list of NCIS extensions on his computer and searched for the Agent Afloat office of the _U.S.S. George H.W. Bush_.

He clearly remembered from the time Tony was Agent Afloat aboard the _Seahawk_ how difficult it was to get in touch with someone on an aircraft carrier—the ship had to be open to communication and the agent had to be in his office in order for a call to connect, and those two things rarely seemed to occur at the same time. It seemed like when Tony was floating that he was always off somewhere else in the ship, investigating something, and more often than not, McGee had to send an email to set up a time to call.

Fortunately, this time he was in luck. _"NCIS, this is Special Agent Frank Atkins."_

"Hey, Atkins, it's McGee from the Navy Yard. How's the _Bush_?"

_"It's a horrible, miserable place to be. I'd give anything to go back to San Diego. Hell, at this point, I'd give anything to go back to solid land, anywhere. You know of any openings in Antarctica? Because I'd even take that."_ It was a rhetorical question that McGee didn't even bother answering. _"What do you need?"_

"Did you get my email about the maintenance crew?"

_"Yeah, got it, have it in my list of things to do."_

"Mind moving it up in the list? This might be a murder investigation."

Atkins gave a put-upon sigh, and even though he had never met the man in person, McGee couldn't help despising him and how little he wanted to actually do his job. _"There's a lot of stuff going on here, Agent McGee. I can't just shuffle everything for someone else's case."_

"If you'd prefer, I'm sure Gibbs can arrange for us to come to the _Bush_ to take care of it for you." It was a threat, and McGee was sure Atkins would take it that way. It definitely wouldn't look good when it came time for semi-annuals reviews, to have had the MCRT from the Navy Yard come and take over an investigation. As it was, the fact that Gibbs and the rest of the team were on the case instead of Atkins wasn't a vote of confidence.

_"I'll get right on it,"_ Atkins promised. McGee wondered if he actually would.

"Got something else on that case that we're going to need from your end," McGee continued. He could practically hear Atkins clenching his fists in frustration. "There's a good chance that at least Captain McNamee, and possibly the entire squadron, was exposed to carbon monoxide. We need to you check out the oxygen filling stations and make sure that the contamination isn't coming from there." And time to drive the nail home to make sure Atkins actually did it. "If there is a problem with the ship's oxygen, we don't want more pilots to be exposed and fall asleep when they're at altitude."

_"Yeah,"_ Atkins said reluctantly. _"That wouldn't be good for business."_

"Probably not," McGee agreed. "The sooner we get both of those, the better."

_ "I'll get on it,"_ Atkins replied. _"Anything else, or are you going to take care of the rest of your case yourself?"_

McGee ignored the jab. "That's it, Atkins. Thanks for your help." He replaced the receiver with a sigh; might as well add the investigation of the maintenance personnel to his list of things to do, because it was obvious Atkins wasn't going to do it. At least, not to the same extent Gibbs expected and refused to settle on.

This whole senior field agent thing wasn't working out the way he thought it would be.


	25. Chapter 25

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 25**

* * *

Just as DiNozzo expected, the CIA was blocking every single one of their moves. At this point, the discovery of the downed Cessna and CIA agent's body was causing more problems than it was fixing.

Between him and Freiler and the empty desk that stood in their office, they were pretty sure that the Cessna was the mysterious unregistered plane that they had been searching for. There was no record of it in any registry and no flight plan that involved the mountains of Iran could be found anywhere.

The only problem was, they still didn't know who the plane belonged to, or why Agent Loyd, or anyone else, wanted Captain Rabb, or where he was now.

He just hoped that wherever Captain Rabb was, he wasn't in the same condition as Agent Loyd. That would not be a good way to end his first big case in Bahrain. He shuddered slightly just at the thought of the video the Iranian government released, with the mutilated body of the CIA agent and vague and harsh threats for retaliation for violating their borders in the background. As if killing the man wasn't harsh enough.

"Okay, Freiler," he said suddenly, as much to get his mind off the video as get his junior field agent's attention. "Campfire."

"Campfire?" Freiler echoed with a frown. He glanced around the otherwise empty office before returning his attention to DiNozzo. "Sir—Tony—it's just the two of us."

"Yeah, so?"

"So isn't every time we talk about the case kinda like a campfire?"

DiNozzo narrowed his eyes as he thought about that. "Smartass," he finally muttered. "Just tell me what you've got."

"Since my last update forty-five minutes ago?"

"If I wanted to be around someone who was being intentionally difficult, I would have invited Ziva to join us."

Freiler smiled slightly at that one. "How is Officer David? How's the housing search coming?"

"She found an actual house," DiNozzo grumbled. Freiler blinked in surprise.

"I didn't you know you guys… I mean…"

"Don't get too excited, Freiler. It's just a house."

"It's not just a house. It's never just a house."

"I really don't think you're qualified to be giving advice in this arena."

"I'm the one who lives in a house that he actually needs."

"Touché, Freiler. Now, what can you tell me about the case?"

The blond agent allowed himself a slight smile before getting back to business. "The video of Agent Loyd that Al-Jazeera released is being analyzed by our video guy downstairs, but I'm not sure that's going to tell us anything. Maybe they'll be able to make out Rabb sitting in a shadow or something." He shrugged. "Like I said, nothing new in the last forty-five minutes."

DiNozzo frowned, his eyes falling on the email open on his computer, the one from Tomblin about her conversation with Sarah Rabb. "What about the case with Captain McNamee?"

"The one that Gibbs' team is working on?"

"Yeah."

Freiler shrugged. "I went through their officer records like you asked, but I can't see any relationship between Captain Rabb and Captain McNamee, other than they both flew fighter jets. And not the same kind of fighter jet, either. Rabb and his wife have been in London for almost all of McNamee's career, and she's never flown into a base on England."

"Air station," DiNozzo corrected absently.

"Hmm?"

"Bases and air stations are different. Kinda. It's not important." He frowned again. "McGee thinks the planes were sabotaged. That's why one of our forensics guys went to Arifjan to check is out. Mrs. Rabb said that if her husband found out that something was going to happen with a fighter squadron, that he would go and try to stop it."

"So how would he have found out that something was going to happen?"

"If we're saying that Agent Loyd took Rabb away—which we are, because it's the only thing we've got going—maybe he told Rabb that something was going down."

"But how'd they end up in Iran? And how would Agent Loyd have known that the planes were going to crash? Unless he was the one doing the sabotaging, that is."

"I didn't say it was a perfect theory, Freiler." DiNozzo frowned as he thought things through. "What if there was some sort of chatter about the crash, and Loyd was acting on it?"

"But why would he need Rabb? Why didn't he contact the squadron leader directly? And why pick him up in a Cessna? Can they even land on aircraft carriers?"

"Rabb once landed a C-130 on an aircraft carrier," DiNozzo pointed out. He had read about that particular stunt in the classified sections of Rabb's personnel file.

"Wouldn't have Tomblin heard about any chatter?" Freiler continued as if DiNozzo hadn't spoken.

"Maybe it wasn't chatter," DiNozzo said thoughtfully. Freiler looked over at him and frowned. "What if it was something Loyd heard about from somewhere else, such as directly from a source. He couldn't contact the squadron leader or the skipper of the carrier, because then he'd have to explain where he got his intel." The more he thought about this, the more sense it made to him. "Think about it. Loyd was an Iran analyst, if we can believe anything the CIA is telling us. Which is doubtful. If he has a source in the Iranian government, he could have heard about someone planning something with Captain McNamee. Maybe he passes it up the chain at the CIA but they deem it either unimportant or unreliable and don't do anything. But it's still a Marine's life we're talking about, so he goes out of his lane and takes matters into his own hands. He knows about Rabb's time with the CIA as a pilot and contacts him about helping the squadron."

"It sounds like something from one of Agent McGee's novels," Freiler pointed out. DiNozzo sighed.

"Yeah, I know," he admitted. "But do you have anything that fits any better?"

"Well, the two cases could be unrelated," Freiler reminded him. "The only thing that says otherwise is the wife of the missing captain. I'm not saying she's unreliable, but—"

"But she wants to believe that her husband is okay," DiNozzo finished.

"Right. And then there's the issue of the plane being in Iran. If they were trying to get to the carrier to stop the crash, how'd they end up so far from the carrier?"

"Are you just going to be shooting holes in all my theories?"

Freiler frowned. "Isn't that what I'm here for?"

"No, Barely-Out-Of-Probiler." He really needed to find a suitable nickname for Freiler. Or just get a new junior field agent, preferably one with a name that would easier to turn into a somewhat demeaning nickname. "You're here to make me look good."

"And how is helping you go down the wrong path going to make you look good?"

"You're even more of a smartass than McGiggle, you know that?" DiNozzo frowned, trying to remember where he was on his theory/novel plot. "Okay, let's start with what we know and don't know."

"We know Rabb landed in Bahrain and took off again," Freiler began.

"With Loyd," DiNozzo added.

"Well, we don't technically know that," Freiler reminded him. DiNozzo glowered briefly.

"Fine," he pouted. "We know Agent Loyd works in the Iran division of the CIA."

"That's just about all we know about for sure about Agent Loyd," Freiler agreed. "Okay, back to knows. We know two Hornets crashed in the Indian Ocean."

"We don't know why they crashed," DiNozzo added. "The folks sitting in my last bullpen are working on that. We know Rabb's a pilot and would protect other pilots."

"Right," Freiler nodded. "Are we still doing knows and don't knows? We don't know how Rabb would have heard about the impending crash. Or if he heard about it."

"If he was on the Cessna, we don't know it ended up in Iran."

"We don't know where Rabb is."

"Thank you, Agent Obvious."

"I was going back to the basics," Freiler said defensively. "We know that you're having housing issues."

"Hey! This isn't about me!" He frowned. "And when did you become so comfortable? You were just calling me 'sir' half an hour ago!"

"Was that too comfortable?" Freiler asked with a frown. DiNozzo sighed.

"There really is no 'too comfortable'," he informed the younger man. "I've been told I have boundary issues." By just about everyone he worked with; he could still remember Kate yelling at him for going through her purse and McGee expressing his frustration at having his food eaten. And then there was the whole issue of sleeping with his former partner. Not that that was anything Freiler had to worry about. "Okay," he said, glancing down at the notes he had been taking. "So our 'don't knows' are longer than our 'knows'." And that wasn't even a complete list. "We're still waiting to see if Vance is able to get anything else from the CIA. We won't have that until tomorrow morning, our time, at the earliest. We don't have access to the plane, so we can't exactly go there and search for fingerprints and figure out who was on it, so the question of how they ended up in Iran is going to have to be left unanswered for now. Let's focus on why Iran would want Rabb and why they haven't said anything about having him. Work with the analysts and Tomblin and anyone else you can get to answer questions on that, see if anyone in Iran is talking about anything or doing anything that would make us suspect they have Rabb."

"And what are you going to be doing?"

DiNozzo glanced down at his watch and did some quick calculations. "I'm going to call HQ and see if Gibbs and company have anything new on their case that might help us with ours. Then I'm heading home."

"Already? I mean, not that you're slacking off," Freiler quickly back-peddled. "It's just, that would be the earliest you've gone home since, well, since you started here."

"Yeah, I know," DiNozzo replied. "But as you've so kindly pointed out, I have housing issues, and they're not going to get figured out by me sitting here staring at the same documents again and again."


	26. Chapter 26

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 26**

_A/N: Yes, I know, it's a short chapter. I was going to combine it with the next chapter, but that would have been too long. Since I haven't been giving you recaps, think of this as a kinda long recap of the case thus far._

_As always, thanks for the reviews. I know I don't do a very good job responding to them. I'll try to do better in the future :)_

* * *

DiNozzo decided within five seconds of starting his videoconference with Gibbs and McGee that he felt sorry for his former probie. He looked exhausted and worn down, and Tony couldn't help but wonder if he looked like that back when he was working directly under Gibbs.

Probably not; McGee and DiNozzo were hardly the same person. And while DiNozzo knew first-hand that McGee was a good senior field agent—a really good field agent; he wished he could recruit him to come to Bahrain—it took a special sort to be senior field agent for Gibbs. DiNozzo just didn't know if he himself was always a special sort, or if he had grown into the role.

He knew the answer to that; of course he was special.

_"What've you got, DiNozzo?"_ Gibbs asked, getting things going in standard Gibbs fashion.

"You mean other than the missing lawyer and a total of about eight hours of sleep since he went missing? Not much. You heard about the plane in Iran?"

_"Heard CIA's working on verifying that it's one of ours."_

"Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on getting anything from the CIA."

_"Glad I taught you something, DiNozzo."_ He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw the hints of a smile on his former boss' face.

"Nobody could find any record of the plane or a flight plan that involved Iran, so we're operating on the assumption that this is the mystery plane that took off from our airstrip right after Rabb landed," DiNozzo continued. "Agent Loyd worked in the Iran division, but that's all we've got from the CIA."

_"Anyone know why he would want Rabb?"_

"Not really," DiNozzo admitted. "Freiler and I were tossing around ideas, didn't get far with that. Campfires are more effective with more than two people, apparently. Rabb's wife is convinced that Rabb got himself in trouble trying to help the pilots in your case, but we can't figure out how he would have known them or found out that they were in going to be in trouble. We're looking into it, but looking into other things, too." Not many other things, but Gibbs didn't need to know that. "So I guess we're saying that Loyd told Rabb about the crash or sabotage or whatever it was to lure him away from Bahrain. We just can't figure out how Loyd would have found out about the crash or how they ended up in Iran." He frowned, remembering that he was calling to ask for information, not get Gibbs' opinion on his case. He was a supervisory field agent now; he didn't need to go running to Gibbs every time he needed something. "Do you have any leads on why your planes crashed?"

Back in DC, Gibbs turned to McGee, who took over. _"We have a couple things going,"_ the newly-crowned senior field agent said. _"Ducky and Gracy saw Captain McNamee's blood work and think she's been poisoned with carbon monoxide, so we're trying to figure out where that would have come from. And your forensics people haven't found anything on Colonel Perry's plane yet, but they're still looking. We just told them where to focus their attention, based on Captain McNamee's theory of how her power went out."_

"You're taking theories from suspects now?"

_"She's not really a suspect, Tony,"_ McGee said quickly, and DiNozzo could have sworn the younger man's face was a little more pink than usual. _"Besides, she has a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from MIT, so I think she's pretty well qualified to figure out how a power failure could have happened."_

"Geez, McGee, don't need to get all defensive," DiNozzo said, unable to resist the temptation to tease his former probie. McGee's face turned even more pink, and DiNozzo had to fight from smirking. Trust McGee to develop a crush on the suspect. Or victim. Or whatever she was. "So you've got a possible carbon monoxide poisoning and a possible sabotage of a fighter jet, and you don't know who did either?"

_"Yeah, that about sums it up,"_ McGee replied with a sigh. _"The squadron didn't bring their usual maintenance personnel, since it was such a short training mission. They used the crew on the _Bush. _I asked Atkins, the agent afloat, to look into the crew, but haven't heard anything back from him yet."_ He sighed again. _"I also asked him to check the oxygen supply chain to see if there's any evidence of a leak or tampering, but haven't heard back from him about that, either."_

"He sounds like an outstanding agent," DiNozzo commented.

_"Yeah. He's looking for a post on dry land. You want me to pass along that you're short a senior field agent."_

"Do it, and I'll find a way to Gibbs-slap you from here," DiNozzo said warningly. "If anyone in this office is going to be not working, I want it to be me."

_"Mossad know anything about Iran?"_ Gibbs abruptly interrupted. DiNozzo frowned, taking a second to figure out what his former boss was asking.

"Don't know," he admitted, realizing that he never even thought to ask Ziva what her agency knew. Considering the fact that Mossad had eyes everywhere, especially in the Middle East, that should have been his first thought, and he had no idea why it wasn't. "Ziva isn't actually working yet. Mossad gave her some time for house hunting before she officially takes over the office."

_"How's that going?"_ McGee asked. Now it was DiNozzo's turn to sigh.

"Current point of contention," was his response. He had already gotten into this with Freiler; no need to discuss it with McGee, too. "I'll ask her if there's any chatter. Does Tomblin know anything?"

_"Not that we've heard,"_ Gibbs replied.

DiNozzo frowned. They were missing something, both teams, but he just couldn't figure out what it was. If Loyd, Rabb, and the downed Hornet pilots were related, there had to be something tying them together. "I'll see what Mossad's willing to share about our Iranian neighbors," he finally said. "Maybe they know what Iran would want with a lawyer or if they would have anything to gain by crashing a couple of Hornets. Is there anything suspicious in the pilots' backgrounds?"

_"Nothing,"_ McGee said quickly, maybe too quickly. _"Captain McNamee has had a squared-away career."_

"What about the other pilot? There was another pilot, right?"

_"Lt. Antonellis,"_ Gibbs replied with a single nod. _"We're looking into that, too. Haven't found anything yet. We'll keep you posted."_

DiNozzo nodded slightly. His former co-workers hadn't said anything he hadn't been expecting to hear; if anything, they gave him less than he had been hoping for. Maybe there was something from his end he hadn't thought of that they could use. "What do you need from me?"

_"You get anything about the Iranians, we'll call it even."_

DiNozzo chuckled. "Sure thing, Boss."

_"Not your boss anymore, DiNozzo."_

"You know what they say about old habits."

_"So how's Bahrain so far?"_ McGee asked, looking relaxed for the first time in the conversation.

"Not too bad," DiNozzo said honestly. "Found a bar where I can watch the Buckeyes. Even found a bunch of sailors who come out with the odd time zones to watch. Gotta love Ohio State fans."

_"You're probably not going to be watching so many games, now that Ziva's there,"_ McGee commented.

"Nah, Ziva'll let me go."

_"If she doesn't, he'll whine about it and drive her nuts until she kills him,"_ Gibbs stated matter-of-factly.

"Probably not too far from the truth," DiNozzo agreed. "And speaking of Ziva, she's probably used her 'I'm not working yet' free time to make another delicious dinner."

_"We'll let you get to that, then,"_ Gibbs said.

_"Tell Ziva we said hi,"_ McGee added. _"And good luck with whatever housing issues you're having."_

_"Doesn't take much luck," _Gibbs said. _"It's already decided. The woman always gets what she wants. Just don't get married."_

"Thanks, Gibbs. Always a help," DiNozzo said sarcastically before leaning forward to end the videoconference. He leaned back in his chair for a moment and took a deep breath.

Time for the housing showdown. Even though he was sure Gibbs was right; Ziva would end up getting whatever she wanted.


	27. Chapter 27

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 27**

* * *

The apartment smelled like Tony's favorite meat sauce when he walked through the door, and he knew he was in trouble. If there were two ways to get an Italian man to do what you wanted, it was food and sex. He wondered if Ziva would be cooking naked, to further stack the deck in her favor.

Regrettably, she was fully clothed when he entered the kitchen and greeted her with a kiss. "You are home early," she said as he reached over her for the wine glasses, not sounding surprised in the least.

"Not much we can do until the CIA and Gibbs get back to us," he commented. They were down to one bottle of red wine; he made a mental note to stop by the package store at some point the next day and restock their supply. "Besides, as both Freiler and McGee pointed out to me, we have housing issues to discuss."

"You discussed the house with Freiler and McGee?" Ziva asked with a frown, and he immediately began trying to figure out where he went wrong.

"Not really," he finally said. "Well, Freiler, yeah, because he was just sitting there with that innocent 'you can talk to me' expression. I need to put him in interrogation, see if that look works as well with criminals as it does with co-workers."

"Tony," Ziva said gently, stopping what she was sure was going to be a lengthy rant trying to explain himself away. "It is okay. I am not upset."

"Oh. Good." He took a sip of the wine and made a face; no wonder they hadn't drank that one yet. "What is this?" he asked as he picked up the bottle.

"It was a gift from Shmuel," she said, looking over. "I visited with them while I was in Tel Aviv."

"I thought his wife was supposed to know wine," Tony remarked, making another face.

"Maybe that is why that is the bottle he gave away," Ziva said with a shrug. "The sauce is almost ready, if you want to set the table." He grumbled good-naturedly about it, earning a smile and an eye roll from Ziva.

For the first few minutes of the meal, both were silent, the only sounds in the small apartment those of forks against china and wine glasses being lifted to lips and returned to the table. "I suppose you want to talk about the house," Ziva finally said.

"It's a house!" Tony exclaimed, his pent up frustration coming out all at once.

"It meets all of our requirements," Ziva said, remaining calm.

"I guess I wasn't aware that houses, gates, and swimming pools were on the list of requirements."

"They were not," Ziva replied. "I do not see why this is so difficult for you. It has only one more bedroom than we want—"

"And a den, and two more bathrooms, and a yard, and a pool!"

"You seem rather fixated about the swimming pool."

"It's not the swimming pool," he said. "It's the house."

She rolled her eyes again. "Would it help if you think of it as a larger apartment?"

He frowned, trying to formulate his next statement. "Freiler said a house is never just a house."

"You are taking advice from someone who practices a religion that preaches procreation?"

"Good point." He took another bite of the delicious spaghetti with meat sauce. "We've never talked about… house related things."

"I will let you pick out the living room furniture. You can even get a ridiculously large screen television."

"Not exactly what I meant."

Ziva sighed, lifting her glass to her lips. "A house does not mean children, Tony," she finally said.

"Do you want kids?" he asked bluntly, and this sip of wine was much longer than the last.

"When I was younger, I did not," she began. "Between his missions with Mossad and his commitment to the IDF, my father was gone more than he was home. I did not understand why my father had children if he did not want to spend time with us." She frowned, momentarily lost in thought. "My parents could not survive Tali's death. My mother blamed my father, I do not know what for; working too much and never being home, or not working enough and not foreseeing the attack. I was…" She didn't complete the thought; she didn't need to. Tony knew what he needed to know about what Ziva did after her sister died. "Children are vulnerable," she continued. "They are weaknesses, a way for the enemy to gain an upper ground." She frowned again, and Tony was glad that most of the time, he had no idea what was going through her head. With everything she had seen and done in her life, he was sure he wouldn't like what was up there most of the time. "My job did not exactly leave much time or sense of security for the traditional idea of family life."

"And now?"

"I do not know," she admitted. "By Mossad standards, I am ready to be… put to the farm?"

"Close enough."

She frowned at the lack of his characteristic response to her messing up a simple idiom. "Yes. My job now is largely administrative."

Tony snorted. "Administrative. Right. I've seen the way you do 'administrative'. It usually involves storming terrorist camps and American combat bases." He drained his glass of wine while he considered her words, and decided he still didn't know what she was talking about. "What are you saying?"

"I do not know," she repeated, and he sighed.

"My dad didn't exactly do the dad thing well," he said. "I never really saw the benefits of the whole family thing." He sighed and rubbed his eyes; this was not how he planned on this conversation going. Of course, he didn't exactly plan this conversation, which was probably how it got to this point. "I spent the last two years trying to get you to move in with me, and now that it's finally happening, you want to get a house. It's a lot to wrap my head around."

"I am sorry. I did not realize this would be so difficult for your head."

"Ha."

Ziva played with her fork idly, something that made Tony nervous every time she did so; he didn't have any actual proof of it, but he was sure she had a list of twenty-two ways she could kill a man with a fork. "I did not mean for this to be such a difficult decision," she finally said, which was as close to a real apology as Ziva ever gave. "I just thought the house would be a nice place to live. You could put your entertainment set-up in the den and we could each have our own office. The swimming pool is too small to swim laps, but it would be relaxing to cool down in. I do not know if you realize this, Tony, but it gets quite hot in Bahrain in the summer."

"Yeah, I kinda picked up on that, seeing as it's in the middle of the Middle East and all." He sighed and reached for his glass again, only to realize that it was empty, as was the bottle of mediocre Israeli wine. Good thing there was always beer in the fridge. "I'm not trying to be an ass about this," he said as he returned to the table, cold bottle of beer in hand.

"I understand. You are programmed to see a house and begin a characteristic overreaction."

"You see, that's one of those things that you need the right inflection for, because your words say understanding, but I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic."

"Yes."

"I love you," he said, almost matter-of-factly. "And I don't want you to doubt that. I can't see my life without you in it. It's just…"

"Just what?" Ziva asked when his voice trailed off.

"I just want to know what the house is."

"It is a house, Tony. That is all." Her eyes fell to her fork before rising again to his eyes. "If I had found an apartment with our requirements, I would have shown you that. I did not. The house is not much larger than a large apartment and has what we need. It is better to upgrade than settle, yes?"

"Yeah." Everything she was saying was making perfect sense. And it had been a nice house…

"I did not think that you were that particular about where we lived," she admitted. "I did not realize that one of your requirements is that it actually is an apartment."

"It's not. It's just that…" He tried to find the words and found that nothing was making sense, even in his head. "I want you to be happy." With both where they lived and with him. He was worried that the house would come with all sorts of expectations of him that he wouldn't be able to live up to.

"I do not know if the house itself will make me happy, but I think we will get along better if we have enough space to separate when we are arguing."

"And that's a benefit I hadn't considered," he agreed. He tried to image escaping from that murderous glint she got in her eyes when a fight got particularly fierce if they were living in an apartment the size of the one they were currently living, and realized that there would be nowhere for him to go. If they each had their own offices… And the den would make for a pretty nice entertainment set-up… "Let's get the house."

Ziva frowned at the sudden change of heart. "You are sure?"

"You said it; you looked at a ton of places and couldn't find anything else you liked. We can't live in this place forever. Let's get it."

"Okay," she said, sounding uncertain now that she had won the argument. "I will call the realtor in the morning and get everything going."

"Okay," he echoed. Slowly, a smile appeared on Ziva's face, and pretty much the next thing Tony knew, she was on his lap, her lips on his.

They took the celebration into the bedroom, onto the bed that might have been big enough for the petite Tomblin, but definitely not for a former college basketball player and his very athletic girlfriend, and another point was added in favor of the house and its large master bedroom.

It wasn't until they were basking in the afterglow of some celebratory sex that Tony remembered that he was in the middle of a case—kinda in the middle of two cases, actually—and both sides of the cases needed something from Mossad. "Hey," he said softly, interrupting the quiet reverie they had going. "Is Dardik back from vacation yet?"

She gave him a look he didn't help interpreting, the one that said _we just had sex to celebrate the fact that we're renting a house in Bahrain, and you're asking about my analyst?_ and she rolled her eyes at the thought of getting back to work instead of doing more celebrating. "Yes," she replied reluctantly. "He returned yesterday. Why?" He filled her in on the advances of the case since the last update, with the plane in Iran and the possible connections to Gibbs' case. "And you want to know what Iran would want with Captain Rabb or why they would want to crash two fighter jets."

"Yeah, pretty much," he admitted. Honestly, he didn't want to be interrupting this celebration any more than she did.

Without saying another word, she got up—allowing him to admire her naked form again—and headed straight for her phone, where a brief conversation in Hebrew ensued. "Get dressed," she said to him as she headed back into the bedroom after hanging up the phone. "He will meet us in the office."

"I didn't mean it had to be tonight," Tony grumbled. "Now we have to interrupt his evening, too?"

"There is no interruption," Ziva replied. "He was still in the office playing a computer game with college students in New York."

"That makes sense," Tony replied as he tossed a tee-shirt over his jeans. "Okay," he said, grabbing his keys. "Let's get this over with."

Guess they'd have to save the celebration until after they actually moved into the house. If that ever happened; at this point, it looked a bit questionable. He made himself a promise at that moment: if this case ended up with a positive solution, he was taking Ziva on a vacation. And maybe for the first time in two years, their vacation wouldn't be interrupted by work.


	28. Chapter 28

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 28**

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True to Ziva's words, Avrum Dardik was at his computer when the NCIS supervisory field agent and Mossad officer crossed the threshold into the large Mossad office. "Welcome back, Dardik," Tony greeted.

The Mossad analyst blinked in surprise as his head whipped up from where his eyes had been fixed on the computer screen, clearly too engrossed in his game to have heard their entrance. "Thanks, Agent DiNozzo," he finally said, and Tony had to keep from smirking in response. There wasn't a single thing about the analyst that said 'Mossad'—a little too soft around the center, floppy dark hair that was a little too long, perfectly round eyeglasses that would have looked more fitting on a Harry Potter impersonator—but he was probably the most talented person to sit behind a keyboard, enough of a hacker to make McGee look like a twelve-year-old doing his best from his parents' computer. "Officer David said you need our help on a case?"

DiNozzo raised his eyebrows in Ziva's direction at the way that had been stated, but she only shrugged and took a seat at her desk. Left with few options, Tony took Cohen's chair and proceeded to share the details of the case that he was free to share with foreign intelligence operatives. "We have a Navy captain who was supposed to meet with me to discuss a case, but never made it to my office," he began.

"Was that about the Zazi case?" Dardik asked, pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. DiNozzo frowned and turned to Ziva.

"Just what did you tell him?" he demanded. This was going to take some getting used to, that their private conversations might not be all that private anymore.

"Nothing," she replied, holding her hands out defensively.

"I like to stay informed of dealings Mossad may have an interest in," Dardik admitted.

"You were on vacation. In Galilee," DiNozzo replied accusingly. Dardik frowned.

"I was not aware that my vacation location was common knowledge."

"I may have mentioned something," Ziva admitted. Dardik seemed to think about that for a second before he shrugged it away.

"Anyway," Tony continued, wondering if interruptions were going to be the norm for his conferences with others. There was Tomblin's friend Captain Hammer, now Dardik… Maybe he should be allotting more time for interteam communications. "After our JAG didn't land, an unregistered plane took off, and we're pretty sure that was the same plane that Iran now possesses."

"The one that they are claiming is proof of espionage against Iran? With the dead CIA agent?" Dardik asked.

"That'll be the one," DiNozzo confirmed. "And possibly related to all this, two Hornets crashed in the Indian Ocean."

"Why would that be related?" Dardik asked, frowning.

"I don't know," Tony admitted. "It's a theory we're working on." He wasn't sure how much he should get into Rabb's background, not as if Dardik wasn't going to find out any way. "So what we need to know is if Iran is making any noise about having a JAG or why they would want him or what they would accomplish by crashing two F-18's." He didn't bother getting into specifics; Dardik would know where to look and how to find it without any help from DiNozzo.

Sure enough, the young analyst nodded and turned back to one of this three computer screens. "I will start right now," he said, his words superfluous as he was already engrossed with the task.

"Do not forget to sleep," Ziva said warningly. "You still have Mossad duties to perform." In response, Dardik looked up and blinked a few times before returning his attention to his computer screens.

Tony and Ziva stuck around for another minute before Tony turned to his former partner. "There's no need for us to still be here, is there?"

"No," she confirmed. "He likely does not even notice that we are still here." DiNozzo's eyebrows rose.

"So, we could do whatever we want," he said. He made a show of looking over at her desk. "What's Mossad's official policy on sex on the desk?"

She was clearly unsurprised at the question. "There is no policy against it," she replied as she got up to head to the door. "However, I can tell you that the bed is a much more comfortable alternative."

"On that note, back to bed," Tony replied. "Wait," he said, her words finally catching up to him. "Does that mean that you've had sex on a desk? Because I know that wasn't with me."

For as much as he hated knowing chuckle she had, he loved it just as much and couldn't even imagine his life without hearing it.

* * *

McGee wished his day had been over after the morning videoconference with DiNozzo, but it had only begun.

The rest of the morning, and most of the afternoon, had been spent looking into the backgrounds of the maintenance personnel of the _U.S.S. George H.W. Bush_ and hoping Agent Atkins would be in contact (he wasn't). What he discovered was hardly a surprise: a few misdemeanors, mostly drunk and disorderly; a handful of official reprimands; one petty officer with a flag on his personnel jacket for marrying an Iraqi woman; and almost half with financial problems of some sort. In other words, an average group of enlisted sailors.

Checking on the oxygen supply stations aboard the carrier was the one thing that he couldn't do, not unless Agent Atkins really did fail in all of his duties and forced McGee to make good on his threats to investigate in person, so by the time he finished with the maintenance crew, there was little to do but pull everything he could on Harlan McNamee to see if he could find something in her past that would interest the Iranian government. Part of him was afraid to check, for what he might find; the rest of him was sure he wouldn't find anything. Either way, it was a task he didn't want to be doing.

"Heading home soon?" McGee looked up to see Dwayne Wilson standing in front of his desk, his bag slung over one shoulder.

"No, probably not," he finally answered. He gestured at the folders resting on the desk he still thought of as DiNozzo's and the computer monitor displaying even more. "I'm going to stay until I've finished this."

"What are you working on?"

"Captain McNamee's background," he explained. "Publications, school work, eight years of evaluation forms… I'll probably be here all night."

Wilson looked conflicted for a moment, a wistful glance toward the elevator. "I'll stay with you," he finally declared, lifting his bag from his shoulder and heading over to Ziva's—his—desk.

"You don't need to do that," McGee protested. "Your wife is going to wonder what you've been up to."

"I'm more worried about my daughter forgetting who I am," the junior agent joked. At least there was little worry of him forgetting who his daughter was; his desk was practically filled with pictures of the eight-month-old, and his screen saver was nothing but a slide show of the Wilson family. "Besides, there's still more I need to look up about Lt. Antonellis."

"You think you're missing something?" McGee asked with a frown. Wilson had been working on that for a few days, and while he wasn't exactly as savvy with a computer as McGee, he wasn't an idiot, either.

"It kinda feels like it," Wilson admitted. "I can't really explain it."

McGee didn't bother hiding his smirk. "It's the gut," he explained. "You work with Gibbs long enough, you starting trusting your gut more than anything else."

"Must be it, then," Wilson agreed. He became serious again. "He has a very large family in New Jersey," he said. It took McGee a moment before he caught on.

"Are you thinking it has something to do with the mob?"

Wilson shrugged. "Big family, Italian name, New Jersey? I dunno. Could be."

"Huh." That would be an interesting twist on things. "Let me know what you find." There was a voice in the back of his head that told him to stay quiet on the topic; the last thing he wanted to do at this point was involve the FBI's Organized Crime unit and have them take any credit for the case.

The two agents had settled in to the quiet of the office after hours, only the glow of the low lights and rumblings of a distant vacuum cleaner to accompany the keyboard clicks and scratches of pens on papers. The elevator dinged some hours later, the deviation from what he had grown accustomed to enough to get McGee's attention. He blinked in surprise at what he saw: Dr. Sonja Gracy in civilian clothing, stepping out of the elevator with what appeared to be a bag of Chinese food in hand. "Gibbs said you guys were burning the midnight oil," she explained as she handed over the bag. "I'm on my way home from a case and thought you guys could use dinner."

"Thanks," McGee said sincerely as he accepted the food. Now that he could smell it, he realized just how hungry he was; further recollection made him realize that he hadn't eaten lunch, either. He glanced at his watch and frowned. "Late night for you, too."

Gracy grimaced as she glanced at her own watch. "Yeah, I know," she said. "The kids are probably getting ready for bed right now. Death doesn't really respect children's bedtimes."

"What was your case?"

"Car accident," she replied, before grimacing again. "Kid just got back from Afghanistan three weeks ago. Got a little carried away on the alcohol and ran his car into a jersey barrier at at least seventy. Flipped it over on 95 into oncoming traffic, stopped everything in both directions."

"Not a stabbing?"

"I'm the deputy Armed Forces Medical Examiner for the National Capital Area, McGee. I do more than just consult on the occasional knife-related death."

"I didn't mean—"

She smiled and shrugged. "Don't worry about it," she interrupted. She glanced over at Gibbs' empty desk before turning back to McGee. "I took a look at the autopsy report of your other pilot and showed it to Colonel Rouse, one of the pathologists at the medical school. She's Air Force, former flight surgeon, ran the flight-related injury and death division at AFIP back when I was a forensics fellow. Nothing out of the ordinary for a plane crash, and nothing in his blood work—no signs of stimulants or any indication that he had been exposed to high levels of carbon monoxide."

"So Lt. Antonellis' death was just from the crash," Wilson summarized. Gracy nodded to the affirmative, her eyes again traveling over to Gibbs' desk before back to McGee.

"Is your boss around at all?"

"Uh, I haven't seen him since… well, it's been a few hours."

"Huh. I thought he said he was still here. Well, if you see him, tell him I came by. Oh, and the soup's for him, so you probably shouldn't eat that."

"Thanks for the warning. And the food."

"I hope you find what you're looking for."

Gracy disappeared as suddenly as she appeared, leaving the food with the two overworked NCIS agents and still no sight of their boss. The soup went into the fridge in the break room—properly labeled so no one else would dare touch it—the lo mein went to Wilson and the cashew chicken to McGee and both agents went back to work, studying the histories of their respective pilots as they tried to figure out why the Iranians, or anybody else, would want them out of the air.

It was somewhere after the third fortune cookie that McGee found what he was looking for, something that would be of great interest to the Iranians, in the last place he had even thought to look: the on-line repository of master's theses for the Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering department at MIT.

Harlan L. McNamee, 1stLt, USMC. A Satellite-Based Method of Missile Defense from Multiple Origins: An Example from Israel.


	29. Chapter 29

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 29**

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Unfortunately, McGee's early morning discovery of Harley McNamee's thesis and why it would be of interest to the Iranians, while opening doors to the case, created more work than it took away. There was a conference with Gibbs and Director Vance to discuss the implications of his discovery, which mostly consisted of sideways glances between the two older men as they discussed how they should proceed with that information and who they should inform. Based on the comments, he was pretty sure that neither would say anything to anyone and both would claim that they thought the other was going to be the one reaching out for interagency cooperations. McGee was starting to appreciate just how far off the book both men liked operating, and to be honest, it scared him a little.

Was that who he was destined to become? He hadn't had nearly enough sleep at this point to contemplate that.

After that meeting—from which he still didn't know what was decided, if anything—he was called down to Abby's lab, for what he was really hoping was good news.

"Timmy!" Abby called out, immediately before throwing her arms around his neck. "I have good news for you!"

He had never been so thankful for a friend who seemed to be able to read his mind so well.

"But you look awful!" she continued, now holding him out at arm's length with eyes wide. "Have you been sleeping well, Timmy? Because you know how you get without sleep. How much did you sleep last night?"

"I didn't," he admitted as soon as she gave him a chance to speak. "Dwayne and I were in the office all night, working."

"Timmy!" Now her voice had a scolding edge. "You know you can't be pulling all-nighters! You're not in college anymore, you know."

"I never pulled all-nighters in college," he said, wondering why he was getting into this conversation. "Abby, why am I here?"

"In a philosophical sense?"

"In a, you sent me an email telling me to come down to your lab, sense."

"Oh. Right." She led the way to the computer in her rarely used office and opened her email. "So I got the report from Tony's guys when I came into work this morning."

"On the plane?" he asked, his previous fatigue forgotten as he focused on this new break in the case.

"Are you waiting for a forensics report from the Middle East team on any other case?" Abby asked rhetorically. For the first time since he had come down to the lab, he noticed that her hair was loose over her shoulders, instead of bound in her usual pigtails.

Now he knew he was tired; those kinds of details were usually noticed peripherally and filed away in his mental folder of things that don't warrant further effort, because he'll never figure them out.

"Anyway," Abby continued, "your Captain McNamee was right. Tony's guys found a detonated charge on the primary electrical bus."

"What kind of fuse? Barometric? Timed? I guess contact wouldn't make sense, because the plane was still going—"

"None of those," the forensic scientist interrupted. "Definitely not contact, but you knew that. It was remote."

"Remote? As in, someone was close enough to two fighter jets at altitude—." He cut himself off, realizing exactly where this was going.

Lt. Antonellis flying next to Harley in formation. Lt. Antonellis defying his squadron leader's orders to return to the carrier. Lt. Antonellis falling from the sky into the dark ocean below.

He didn't know why, but Antonellis caused the power outages that almost killed two other pilots in his squadron, and killed him instead.

"Thanks, Abby," he said. He remembered her words about giving her a kiss on the cheek before leaving the lab, but decided that was just a little bit too, well, weird, considering she was someone he used to date.

"Wait! Timmy! That's not all! There were fingerprints! The charge was placed by Petty Officer Thomas Hathaway of the _Bush_'s maintenance crew!" The closing of the elevator doors were enough to tell Abby that she had just missed the senior field agent. "He has got to stop leaving the lab in the middle of my presentations," she muttered to herself before returning her attention to her breakfast.

* * *

The nurses of 5 Center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center responded to McGee's inquiries about the location of Captain McNamee by simply stating that she had been given off-ward privileges, before they returned to whatever it was that they had been doing without explaining to McGee what exactly 'off-ward privileges' meant.

Unfortunately, WRNMMC was a sprawling medical compound, surrounded by a base that, while small, was still an entire Navy base, with many, many places that a Marine captain could be. Fortunately, he found her after only twenty minutes of searching.

She was sitting atop a picnic table in one of the courtyards surrounding the immediate hospital facility, her feet resting on the bench. With her leather bomber jacket, jeans, and sunglasses—black-framed Oakleys, not traditional aviator sunglasses—she looked more like a visitor than a patient. The only thing that hinted at her real status was the fact that one arm was in a sling across her chest instead of inside her jacket sleeve.

Before he had an opportunity to alert her to his presence, Harley seemed to pick up on it on her own, turning and giving him a smile that he couldn't tell whether or not it extended to her eyes. "Hey, Tim," she greeted, scooting over on the picnic table slightly to give him room to sit. He sat.

"You were hard to find," he commented, and she gave him another smile.

"I know," she admitted. "I just needed the fresh air and change of scenery. There's only so much TV I can watch before I start to go stir-crazy." She turned away, her eyes at something in the distance, or at nothing at all. "Although it's a bit cold out here for my southern blood."

"Believe me, it's going to get worse," McGee commented, before realizing how silly that comment was. She was probably going to be back in Beaufort before the harsh DC winter even got close to starting. In late October, it was still in the low 60's, the air crisp and the leaves gold and red.

"I've always liked DC," she said after a long period of silence. "Which is odd, because I don't really have any happy memories with this place at all. I had a gymnastics competition here right before my fifteenth birthday and fell off the uneven bars. Dislocated my shoulder and tore all the ligaments of my rotator cuff." She glanced down at her immobilized shoulder and then back off into the distance. "I was training for the Atlanta Olympics, but you can't come back from an injury like that. Not ever, definitely not in a month before the Trials." The more she talked, the more she allowed her faint Southern accent to come out. "I didn't come down to DC often from Hopkins, and I definitely didn't come up much from Quantico when I was there for OCS. I was here, actually at this hospital, back when people still called it Bethesda, when I was an engineering officer. I came to get my eyes fixed. I wanted to fly, but I had been wearing glasses or contacts since I was a kid." He remembered one or two mornings when she showed up to the study group in glasses, thick lenses with black plastic frames before such things were cool. "I was here for a week. If I had known that you were around, I would have looked you up." She finally looked over at him and gave him a crooked smile. "Although I wasn't much company after the surgery. I mostly sat around my hotel room, crying at the bright lights and how badly they hurt."

"I can't imagine you being anything but good company," McGee said honestly. That got a smile out of her. "I wish you had," he said. "Looked me up," he clarified.

"So do I," she said softly. She held his gaze through her dark sunglasses for a long minute before looking away again. "I guess you didn't come here looking like you haven't slept in a week to talk about DC and the weather. More questions for me?"

It took him a moment to figure out what to say and how to say it. "You were right," he finally managed. She turned and gave him what he could only assume was a quizzical glance. It was hard to tell through the sunglasses. "The primary electrical bus on Colonel Perry's plane was tampered with. There was an explosive." Her eyebrows shot up over the top of those dark glasses. "It was remotely detonated," he continued, trying to figure out if there was a way to break this news gently. Somehow, 'your friend tried to kill you' didn't seem all that gentle.

"Remotely detonated," she echoed. "What kinds of ranges do things like that have? I mean, could it have been detonated from land, or from the carrier, or was it…"

"It probably would have been someone fairly close," he said, his voice soft. "No further than a couple hundred feet."

She turned away as she contemplated this. "You think Guido did it, don't you?"

"You said he was flying next to you during the exercise, and then he was there when Colonel Perry lost power, even though he had been ordered back to the carrier." She didn't have anything to say to that, just took a deep breath before letting it out again in a rush.

"Guido," she said quietly. "Shit." He let her absorb that information for a few minutes. "So what about the carbon monoxide?" she said a moment later.

"We still don't know anything about that," he admitted. "There wasn't any evidence of it in Lt. Antonelli's blood work, but they weren't specifically looking for it."

"What about the rest of the squadron?"

"Clean," he informed her.

"But it had been quite a few days since they were in the air," she said, finishing the thought that he had. "So you don't know if they were truly clean or not."

"Right." They sat silently for a few more minutes, McNamee just absorbing everything that he had said and McGee too sleep-deprived to think of anything potentially comforting to say.

He had no idea how long it had been before she spoke again. "You must be really good at your job," she finally said, turning her head toward him again.

"Why?"

She shrugged her shoulder and looked away. "I don't know," she admitted. "The details, I guess. The puzzle of the crime, putting everything together and figuring out what's going on."

"I haven't figured it all out yet," he pointed out.

"I know," she replied. "It seems to suit you, what you do. Law enforcement. I guess it wasn't much of a surprise to me that that's where you ended up. I don't know why. BME to federal agent… that can't be a normal career path, but it makes sense." She gave a chuckle. "Unlike this entire conversation."

He smiled in return, trying to figure out how to ask the question that had bugged him twelve years before. "Why my study group?" he finally asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you were always late." She smiled and nodded in agreement at the memory, but he wasn't done. "There were afternoon study groups. Why did you pick a morning study group, when you had diving and NROTC?"

He was surprised to see a slight blush to her cheeks that he could have sworn wasn't there before. "Everyone said you were the best TA," she said. "My advisor and upperclassman in the major. For one, you actually spoke English, which isn't always common among BME TAs." He had to chuckle and nod in agreement to that one. "I didn't realize that my schedule was going to be that tight," she continued. "And by the time I saw that it was, I didn't want to change groups." Her blush deepened. "I was eighteen," she said, sounding defensive, "and, to be honest, I thought you were cute. In an awkward and geeky way." She laughed and gave a small shrug. "It was a long time ago."

He didn't know if it was the fact that he couldn't remember the last time he had been asleep, or if it was some strange celebration of figuring out why the power on her plane went out, or something else entirely, but he leaned forward and kissed her. And he didn't know if it was out of surprise or if maybe she was just as sleep-deprived as he was, but she kissed him back.


	30. Chapter 30

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 30**

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews to last chapter! I was honestly expecting a lot of McAbby fans to be slamming me for that chapter, and I was really impressed with the number of people who liked the ways things turned out._

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It took McGee's sleep deprived mind a moment to catch up to what exactly was going on, and he reluctantly pulled away from Harley. He felt like he should apologize, but then he remembered that they were both adults and he wasn't her TA anymore. So he did the next best thing. "I didn't actually come here for that," he admitted.

To his relief, she was still smiling. "I figured that," she said with a small laugh, her smile making him want to kiss her again. _Not now,_ he scolded himself.

"I, uh, actually needed to talk to you about your master's thesis." Maybe she was still in a playful mood, but her eyebrows arched above the rims of her sunglasses, her smile unchanged.

"Thinking of taking up aero/astro?" she joked.

"I wish it were that simple, Harley." He really didn't want to do this, not right now. "You wrote about missile defense in Israel."

"Yeah." It fully registered to her that he wasn't joking, and she also became serious. "Small countries do missile defense differently than large countries; Israel's missile defense isn't like, say, the Star Wars program of the Cold War. When you have one enemy who has very big missiles pointed directly at you, you do things differently than if you're a small country surrounded by other small countries, all of which have small missiles that they would love to shoot at you." Her lips straightened into a line as she took a moment to collect her thoughts. "Missile defense for, say, an aircraft carrier would be closer to Israel's missile defense than our national networks—you're a small target and it's harder to predict exactly where an attack is coming from. That's why the Navy bothers to care. Why the sudden interest in a four-year-old master's thesis?"

He tried to figure out what exactly she was cleared to know and what of that she actually needed. "A Navy JAG was abducted a few hours before your crash," he finally said. "We're pretty sure he's in Iran right now. And we think his abduction is connected to your crash."

"How?"

"I can't get into a lot of that," he apologized. That, and he didn't exactly have all the details figured out for himself. "But Israel's missile defense, well, it seems like something Iran would be interested in."

"Everything in my thesis was declassified," she said defensively. "I didn't use anything that wasn't. Believe me, I understand the importance of national security."

"I didn't mean to imply otherwise," McGee said quickly. How had they gone from kissing to this so quickly? "You had access to classified material, though, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, I still do. So do you, I'm guessing." She had a point; he had a top secret clearance. "I did most of the work for that in Crystal City, there's a missile defense national team that's made up of civilian engineers from all of the big five engineering firms, you know, Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop. They work directly with the Missile Defense Agency, and that's where a lot of the heavy hitters are. Compared to what they do there, my thesis was a kindergarten art project. And then there's the whole issue of the fact that the paper's four years old!" She was getting worked up about this, and he couldn't say that he blamed her. If something happened to him or one of his friends because of something that he had written years ago, he'd be pretty upset too.

Well, something _had_ happened to him and his friends because of something that he had written, and he had been pretty upset about that. There were moments he still got upset about it and swore he would never write again as a result.

But that wasn't relevant at the moment; figuring out what the Iranians wanted with Harley and how they thought they were going to get it was. "How would Iran even find out about your master's thesis?" he asked.

She shrugged her uninjured shoulder. "Probably the same way you did," she said. "It's online." She sighed, removing her sunglasses for the first time since he had found her and rubbed her eyes. "The better question is, what does data that was declassified more than four years ago have to do with crashing a plane? What's the point in killing me?"

"They probably didn't want you dead." The more he thought about this, the more sense it made. "Someone went to the trouble of planting explosives on your plane, and did it so you just lost power. If they wanted your plane to explode, they could have done that."

"But with my power going out, I would be forced to land. On land." She turned to him and frowned, her eyes dark and somewhat bloodshot, and McGee couldn't believe how much he was laying on her all at once. "So then what? Some Iranian spy manages to get onto Camp Arifjan and manages to get me off base and back to Iran? And for what? Data that was declassified four years ago? I don't know how much you stay in touch with the engineering circles, Tim, but four years is an eternity. I don't even know if Israel's using the same systems they were using then."

"What if they didn't know that?" Harley frowned, and he realized the question didn't exactly make sense. "What if they didn't know that the extent of your knowledge on the subject is that old?"

"I'm pretty sure anyone who can find a thesis online can find the date it was published."

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean that they know that was the last time you worked on the subject."

"But it was."

"But they don't know that."

"So someone, somewhere, is assuming that I'm a lot more knowledgeable on Israel's missile defense system than I really am. And they want to kidnap me for that knowledge? Knowledge, by the way, that I don't have." She rubbed her eyes again. "Why me?" she asked, looking back at him. "Why would someone go to all that trouble for me, when there are people who are much easier to kidnap who know a hell of a lot more about the topic than I do?" She frowned again, remembering another detail. "And why would Guido be the one trying to force me to land? What does he have to do with any of this? He's a Marine, for Christ's sake… He's not an Iranian agent! He's an Italian boy from New Jersey!"

"Was he having any financial problems?" Two motives for everything—greed and jealousy. It always came down to money or love.

"I don't think so," she said slowly. "I think he made a pretty decent living when he was working for Boeing, especially considering he's not an engineer. He has a Nissan sports car, you know, that Z car, which believe me, is not excessive for Beaufort. Even the enlisted guys have sports cars. Especially the enlisted guys, actually. He certainly never complained about money." She frowned and looked off into the distance. "I guess you never really think about how little you know the people you work with until you get asked questions, you know? I don't know what would motivate Guido to try to force me to land, but obviously, something did, right?"

Remembering his thought the evening before when Dwayne brought up Antonelli's family in New Jersey, McGee asked, "What about his background?"

"What do you mean?" Harley asked. "Like I said, he's an Italian boy from New Jersey. That's about all I know." She gave a slight and bitter laugh. "It all goes back to not really knowing the people you work with. I've never met his parents or any siblings or anything. We never talked about high school mascots or exchanged stories about cousins." She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said, sounding like she really was. "I'm sorry I don't have your answers or know what was going on. I really wish I did."

"I know." There was a point, both in interrogation and when questioning witnesses, that there were limiting returns. More questions weren't going to get any more answers, so that's when it was time to stop. It was obvious that Harley had shared everything she knew; she was starting to repeat answers and was getting progressively more and more frustrated with each new question. He just wished he could go back ten minutes, to when they were sitting on that picnic table and all he was caring about was her lips on his.

But they couldn't go back; right now, he didn't know if they could ever go back, or if that was just a fluke, just something that happened in the heat of the moment and with the lack of clarity of thought that came with not sleeping. Still, he could move away from the questions about the case and onto something else. "So, Colonel Perry says you want to be an astronaut," he offered lamely.

"Everest said that?" Harley asked with a frown.

"You don't?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It seems silly now, with all shuttle missions tabled indefinitely. And getting selected for the astronaut corps... That's pretty tough. I'd have to go back and get a Ph.D in something, and even then... And then there's this crash. After this, I don't know if I'm even going to be allowed to fly again, much less pilot a space shuttle." She slipped her sunglasses over her eyes again and looked off into the distance. "The orthopedic surgeons are talking about discharging me soon, which means they'll probably schedule the inquest in a week or so. Get to it in a month or two. Standard Corps—hurry up and wait."

"Inquest?" McGee asked with a frown.

"It's SOP when you crash a plane," she explained. "And considering that another plane went down, too, and Guido was killed... Well, it might not go well for me."

"But the crash was Lt. Antonellis' fault, not yours," McGee argued. Harley sighed.

"I wish it were that simple, Tim. I really do." McGee had no idea what to say to that, so he didn't say anything. For the next hour, the two Johns Hopkins alumni just sat together on the picnic table and watched the activity around them, neither speaking a word.


	31. Chapter 31

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 31**

_A/N: I hope everyone had a merry Christmas! _

_

* * *

_

Special Agent Kim Tomblin was curled up on the couch with Jeff Cunningham, a sushi dinner on the coffee table in front of them and an episode of _M*A*S*H_ on the TV when her BlackBerry rang. "I'm going to throw that thing over the balcony and into the Pacific," Jeff grumbled as she paused the DVD and reached for the phone.

"Fine by me," she replied, "but your pager goes first." He chuckled in acquiescence as she accepted the call. "Hey, DiNozzo," she said as a greeting. She glanced at her watch. "Working early?"

_"Working early, working late. It's become the story of my life."_

"So what's up? Anything new on the case?"

_"That's actually what I'm here early to check on," _the SAC in Bahrain replied. _"Got Dardik doing some digging for me."_

"See? What did I tell you about interagency cooperation?" she teased. "Interesting bit on a downed Cessna on Al-Jazeera the other day. That the mystery plane you're looking for?"

_"Can't be a hundred percent, but that's what we're going with. I haven't gone upstairs to check with Dardik yet, but I asked him to see if he heard anything about what Iran would want with a Navy captain. Or with crashing a couple of Hornets."_

"Yeah, both of those are a bit specific for general acts of aggression," Tomblin agreed. And she definitely knew what acts of aggression usually looked like, after two tours in Iraq as a Marine officer and two years in Bahrain as an NCIS agent. "I haven't heard any chatter, if that's what you're asking about." She felt a pang of guilt; she hadn't been going out of her way to find any, either. She had her own cases to work up, and between those and taking care of Jeff, as much as Jeff let anyone take care of him, she didn't exactly have time to be dedicating to cases she wasn't officially on.

_"That's not actually why I called, believe it or not," _DiNozzo replied. _ "Ziva and I found a place to move into, so you can finally have your stuff back."_

"So I can put it promptly in storage," Tomblin said with a laugh. "There isn't exactly enough space in Jeff's apartment for another bed or living room set or dining room table. But yeah, I'll contact the moving company and get it taken care of. Where are you guys going to be?"

_"In Juffair, right on the beach," _DiNozzo replied. He gave her the cross streets and she frowned, trying to place the neighborhood.

"I didn't think they had apartments there," she admitted. "I thought it was just the houses."

There were a few beats of silence on the other end of the call. _"Yeah," _DiNozzo finally said. _"We're getting a house."_

Tomblin laughed, just because she couldn't think of a more appropriate response. "A house?" she echoed, still laughing. "Holy shit, DiNozzo, you living off some trust fund from your father or something? 'Cause I know exactly how much you make, and it isn't enough for a house on the beach in Juffair."

_"Apparently Israel values their government employees more than we do."_

"Are you serious? Just how much does Ziva make?" She knew it wasn't polite to ask, but she was intrigued at the idea of government employees making enough money for a two thousand dinar a month house.

_"She won't come out and say, exactly," _DiNozzo replied. _ "I don't know how it works, if Mossad just values her particular skill set as much as they should or if she's given a general operating budget that includes housing for her and Cohen and Dardik, but the house was her idea and she promises we won't get evicted for failing to make rent."_

"I am clearly working for the wrong government." She saw Jeff's eyebrows raise questioningly at the comment. "So the house was her idea, huh? She trying to give you a hint?"

DiNozzo gave an uncomfortable chuckle. _"We already had that conversation," _he admitted. "_She says it's just a house."_

"Well, if she says so. Just let me know when I need to buy a wedding gift." She knew it was mean, but she couldn't resist the temptation to tease DiNozzo.

_"You're a fine one to talk, Tomblin. How's Cunningham?"_

She glanced over at the blond pediatrician and gave him a quick look that made him laugh. "He's doing better," she replied. "He's still non-weight bearing on his leg for another four or so weeks, but the hand docs gave him permission to start using crutches, so he'll be out and about more. I'm heading to DC in a couple of days for the Marine Corps Marathon, and then we're meeting up in the real Washington to see my family for a couple of days." He wasn't up for trans-continental flights yet, which was why he wasn't accompanying her to DC, but they agreed that they didn't want to miss out on what could be their last chance to see her grandfather. "Not to be rude or anything, DiNozzo, but is there anything else you need from me? We've got beer and sushi and TV here, all of which are just begging for my attention. And Jeff, but it's easier to ignore his begging than that of the sushi and beer. And TV."

_"I'll let you get to that, then,"_ DiNozzo said with a laugh. _"Keep me posted if you hear anything about the case through the grapevine. And don't forget to call the movers."_

"I won't," Tomblin promised as she ended the call. Jeff hit play on the DVD player, again filling the apartment with sounds of the antics of the 4077th. As Tomblin used the chopsticks to move another piece of the spicy tuna roll from her plate to her mouth, she couldn't help but reflect on all the changes of the last month: she was in San Diego with Jeff, DiNozzo was in Bahrain with Ziva, McGee was the senior field agent for the MCRT at the Navy Yard, and nothing seemed to be where she could find it at all.

Just about the only thing that seemed to be staying constant was the one thing she wished would change: how much effort their enemies were willing to put forth to hurt them.

* * *

Tony DiNozzo leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. Tomblin had been right; it was an early morning: at the office at six, after waking with Ziva but begging off on the morning run that was, honestly, one of his favorite parts of the day.

Bahrain was making him insane. That was the only conclusion he could reach.

Ziva was going to meet with the realtor in the morning and get the paperwork started for the lease—she promised to bring the papers by his office when she brought lunch, so he could add his John Hancock to hers—and then she was officially starting her work upstairs, overseeing Cohen and Dardik and an unknown number of other Mossad super-operatives throughout the Middle East and Horn of Africa, work that would probably exclude him more often than not.

That was the strangest part, going from partners to employees of federal agencies of countries that didn't always get along as well as they liked to pretend they did.

Freiler wasn't scheduled to come into the office until eight, and Dardik probably wouldn't be providing any results of his search until at least then, which left DiNozzo to a task he had been putting off for far too long: finding an occupant for the empty desk in his office.

And possibly finding a junior agent as well, because he still didn't know if Vance was going to let him keep Freiler.

It was an odd situation; DiNozzo would have been the first to admit that, and if he had the luxury, he would have replaced the kid as soon as he took over the office. It was nothing against Freiler, as a person or as an agent. He was a hard worker and did whatever he was asked. It was just that the man was barely a year out of his probationary period and had lost both of his senior agents, one to murder and one to a move to San Diego. DiNozzo, and anyone DiNozzo ended up selecting to replace Tomblin, were more senior than Freiler, but he had been at the office longest. And that was a tough situation, to answer to people who didn't know the ropes as well as you did.

But if anyone could do it, it was Freiler. In addition to being a hard worker, he seemed to have no agenda of his own; DiNozzo wasn't even sure if it was possible to hurt the man's feelings, for as open and friendly as he was with everyone. Hell, he even laughed along to the Mormon jokes and tossed in a few of his own. But protocol was protocol, and if protocol stated that Freiler was to go to another office, those were the rules.

He frowned at the thought as he opened the file on his computer that contained the personnel records of every agent who met the requirements of senior field agent in Bahrain. Since when did he follow the rules? Hadn't Gibbs taught him better than that? After all, his former supervisory field agent had managed to keep McGee on the team long after his probationary period, something that was rarely, if ever, done in the agency—you did your probie time in one office, then moved on to another office.

So if Gibbs could do it, why couldn't he?

He was met with a rewarding rush of self-assurance after the decision, which he quickly moved aside. He wasn't going to make any decisions about his team without consulting the team members it affected directly. Freiler still had almost two years left on his contract in Bahrain; if he wanted to stay, DiNozzo would fight to keep him, but if he'd rather move on, he'll respect that, too.

Damn gray areas in the protocol.

He returned his attention to the files on his computer and had just enough time to remove one agent from consideration when his phone rang, the caller ID telling him it was coming directly from Vance's inner sanctum. "NCIS, this is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo," he said, mustering up his best professional tone.

_"Found an agent for you, DiNozzo. Since you were in no hurry to do it yourself."_

Dammit. He had no idea how that man always stayed one step ahead of him, even from eight time zones away. "I was actually reviewing files when you called, Director," he said instead of voicing his real thoughts, which were a lot more profane and not entirely in English. If there was one thing the Italian side of his family had taught him, it was how to swear. And if there was one thing dating Ziva David had done for him, it was expanding the number of languages he could do that in.

_"Don't care,"_ Vance replied. _"Special Agent Gabrielle Stone. She's coming over to us from the FBI. Just married a lieutenant commander who's being shipped off to Bahrain. FBI didn't have anything for her on the island, so I promised we'd take care of her."_

"I can't have some brand new agent acting as my senior field agent, Director," DiNozzo argued, trying to stay calm. "We're not set up for probies."

"_She's hardly a probationary agent, Agent DiNozzo. She's had nine years at the FBI, the last six in anti-terrorism. Before that, she was an Intelligence officer in the Army and graduated from West Point. She has a master's degree in forensic science and speaks fluent Arabic in both Saudi and Iraqi dialects. Quite frankly, DiNozzo, she has a more impressive resume than Agent Tomblin."_

He had to admit, the new agent did sound, well, pretty much perfect for the office, maybe even more so than him. Still, picking a new senior field agent was his first real administrative duty as the special-agent-in-charge in Bahrain, and the realization that he failed at that was hitting him hard; it was probably the last thing he needed, not while working a major case that he was making barely any progress in. So he did the responsible thing and murmured a few words of acquiescence before Vance ended the call.

First his case was tied into Gibbs', then Vance started taking over his administrative duties. It seemed more and more each day that the idea of becoming independent of both men was just a pipe dream never to be achieved.


	32. Chapter 32

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 32**

_A/N: Sorry about the delay since my last posting; holidays and all that. I hope everyone had a great New Year's celebration, and here's to 2011 being a great year!_

_

* * *

_

Vance had been kind enough to send DiNozzo the personnel file on his soon-to-be senior field agent—the Stones were scheduled to arrive in Bahrain in a week and a half—so DiNozzo had more than just the brief history on the agent that Vance gave to offer Freiler when the younger man appeared promptly at seven. As DiNozzo expected, Freiler listened intently to the explanations, nodding at all the right times, and offered his opinion—that Agent Stone sounded very knowledgeable on the Middle East and that he was looking forward to working with her—when DiNozzo was done.

"You're not upset that she takes seniority over you, even though she's only been an NCIS agent for a month? And that she's just arriving to Bahrain?"

"Nope," Freiler replied, shaking his head. "As you said, she's done her time doing similar work for the FBI. And I knew that whoever would be coming to replace Kim would be outranking me. It won't be a problem, Tony, I promise."

"Well, that's good," DiNozzo offered lamely. After the last several weeks of working with the junior agent, he didn't doubt that. "I'm glad, really. I wouldn't want there to be any problems. An office never runs all that smoothly once problems begin to appear."

"Are you okay?" Freiler asked, frowning. "You're starting to talk a little fast and sound a bit nervous."

He really didn't know how to say this, so he figured the direct approach might be the best. "You lost both of your fellow field agents. One was murdered. The other was framed for it. That's not exactly a normal situation, but—." He was talking fast and nervous again, and forced himself to take a deep breath. This shouldn't have been this difficult. "Usually, when a junior agent loses two senior agent, he gets moved to another office. You know, start the office off with a fresh minty scent." He was sounding really, really nervous, even to his own ears. He'd have to check the coffee machine at home and make sure Ziva didn't switch his coffee out for something stronger. Like cocaine.

"I'm okay staying here and fulfilling my contract," Freiler replied, frowning as he tried to figure out what DiNozzo was saying.

"Listen, Freiler, things are going to change. I'm not Burley, Agent Stone probably isn't going to be Tomblin, and you're going to have to change with that, even though you've been here the longest. It's a strange situation, which is why Director Vance is probably going to want you moved to another office, once things stabilize here. If you want to stay, I'll fight for you to stay, but if you want to go, I'll make sure you get your choice of offices. Bryn is from Sweden, right?"

"Uh, Finland, actually."

"Those are close, right?"

"Close enough, but I wouldn't recommend saying that to Bryn. Fins and Swedes don't get along at all."

"Right. I can check to see if there are any openings in Europe—"

"I'm okay staying," Freiler repeated. "Really. I know it's going to be different, but that's okay. I've learned a lot so far in this office, and I'm looking forward to learning even more under you and Agent Stone." He shrugged slightly. "And, to be honest, I don't really want to be moving my family again so soon, not with the baby coming and Emma in school now, so if we can stay until the end of the contract, well, that'll actually be easier on me. On all of us."

"Okay," DiNozzo said with a nod, his first definitive word since the conversation started. "Okay. I'll tell that to Vance, and work on getting that taken care of for you."

"Thanks," Freiler said with a relieved smile. "And I really am looking forward to continuing to work for you."

"Okay, you can stop the brown-nosing any time now."

* * *

When DiNozzo hadn't heard anything from Dardik, or anyone else occupying the office upstairs, by 1000, he decided to go investigate for himself. He wasn't really surprised when he opened the door to find Ziva's desk empty, Cohen was leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk and a comic book in his hands, and Dardik was practically glued to his computer monitors, still in the same clothes he had been wearing the evening before.

Also not surprisingly, Cohen was the first to register DiNozzo's presence. "Officer David is not yet here from the realtor's office."

"Yeah, I figured." He frowned as he studied the _metsada_ operative. "Are you reading _Green Lantern_?"

"Comic books are not just for a child's entertainment, Agent DiNozzo."

"I'm sure," Tony replied dryly. He turned his attention to Dardik and was about to speak, but Cohen beat him to it.

"Avrum," he barked, throwing a pen at the analyst. Dardik blinked and finally looked up from his computer. "Pay attention to Agent DiNozzo."

"Sorry, Agent DiNozzo," he said automatically. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose.

"I'll forgive you if you can tell me what's going on in Iran." He realized those were pretty much the same words he spoke to Tomblin's friend, Captain Hammer. He was going to have to stop making his forgiveness so conditional. Ziva would never let him get away with that.

"Iran, yes," Dardik replied, pushing up his glasses again. "I believe what you are looking for has been classified as what translates to 'Operation Burning Sky'."

"Sounds dramatic."

"Do not interrupt him," Cohen said warningly, his attention still on his comic book. "He will lose his train of thought, then it is all over."

"Duly noted," DiNozzo replied. He turned back to the analyst. "Sorry. Continue."

"Operation Burning Sky first appeared in VEVAK's—I believe the English-speaking world refers to Iranian Intelligence as MISIRI—databases two years ago. The goal is either to remove Israeli satellites involved in missile defense from orbit or to block communication between those satellites and the ground. It is not exactly clear in the communications and it is possible that the goal has changed since the inception of the operation." DiNozzo was about to ask what this had to do with Rabb, or the two Hornet pilots, but remembering Cohen's words of warning, only nodded.

As if reading his mind, Dardik continued, "Among supporting documents for Operation Burning Sky is a paper written by a United States Marine on the missile defense satellites that Israel has incorporated into our defense systems. The Marine was Lt. Harlan McNamee. This is the Captain McNamee that was involved in the crash, yes?"

"Harlan McNamee can't be that common of a name," DiNozzo replied, his mind processing this information. Capt McNamee knew about Israel's missile defense system, Iran knew that she knew, her plane fell from the sky… He decided to wait and see what else Dardik had for him before voicing any of these thoughts.

"The Iranians had a source, who is only referred to by a code name, _La Massab_," Dardik continued.

"That means sacrilegious or immoral in Persian," Cohen chimed in.

"Is there some sort of Mossad language camp or something?" DiNozzo asked with a frown. "How many languages do you speak?"

"Enough to do my job," Cohen replied sagely, returning his eyes to his comic book with a smirk playing on his lips.

"_La Massab_ exchanged information pertaining to Captain McNamee for $350,000," Dardik continued, seemingly unaware of the side exchange that had just taken place. His glasses had slipped down again, which was quickly remedied by an absent push with his middle finger. DiNozzo wondered if the Mossad analyst was aware that that was an offensive gesture. "According to what I have found, they were to capture Captain McNamee and transport her to Tehran. The details after that point are less published. I do not know if the goal was to obtain information or to obtain help in destroying Israel's satellites."

"So this llamas person—"

"_La Massab_," Cohen corrected DiNozzo, who just returned that with an eye roll.

"He—or she—was selling information about McNamee's expertise? Was he also responsible for capturing McNamee, or was that someone else's job?"

"I believe it was to be _La Massab_, but I am not sure," Dardik admitted. "As I have said, VEVAK's records are not completely clear."

"Hmm," DiNozzo murmured as he thought this through. He had no idea who _La Massab_ would be—maybe Gibbs and company would have a better idea about who would be willing to sell information on a Marine pilot for $350,000—but whoever it was could be tied both to the crash and why Iran would be behind it, although the situation apparently hadn't worked out for them as they had anticipated.

It still didn't explain anything about Rabb, though.

"What about the Cessna? Or Captain Rabb?"

Dardik frowned over in his direction as he thought about that. "I do not know," he finally admitted. "I found communications between members of VEVAK about the Cessna and Agent Loyd, as well as the capture of Captain Rabb from the Cessna, but as far as Operation Burning Sky—"

"Those communications," DiNozzo interrupted, beginning to feel that they were finally getting somewhere, "do they say anything about where they took Captain Rabb after he was captured?"

"Yes, of course," Dardik replied, seeming surprised by the question. "He is in solitary at Evin, in Tehran. Where else would he be?"


	33. Chapter 33

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 33**

_A/N: Sorry about the delay... all sorts of computer problems :( I can't guarantee a chapter for Monday morning, either... sorry again._

* * *

_Where else would he be? _The words had probably bounced around in DiNozzo's head for a good minute before he found the power to speak again. Where else, indeed? The prison, notorious in Iran and throughout the rest of the world for being where Iran kept—and tortured—its political prisoners and anyone else they found inconvenient, including those American hikers out for a nice walk along the mountains of Iraq and maybe or maybe not crossed into Iran.

As if vacationing in a war zone wasn't stupid enough. Ziva went on mini-rants about those three about once a month, more often if something prompted a memory. He knew all the words by heart by now and didn't even need her there to know what she would have said.

But this wasn't about a few hippies stumbling across national borders; it was about a captain who most certainly was not in Iran by choice. "You're sure that's where they took Rabb? That he's still alive?"

"I cannot be completely confident that he is still alive," Dardik replied. "But I am sure that he was taken to Evin after his capture, yes."

"Who was taken to Evin?" All three men in the room turned toward the door and the source of the voice who just walked through it. DiNozzo wondered if the other two looked as guilty as he must have looked. "Well?" Ziva demanded when none of the three responded. "Who was taken to Evin?"

"Captain Rabb," DiNozzo replied. A slight frown creased Ziva's forehead, followed immediately by a guilty expression that told him that he wasn't the only one to fail to make the connection between someone being held in Iran and Evin prison.

"I see," she replied, her voice even. She crossed the office and took a seat at her desk, where her eyes fell on something outside of DiNozzo's line of sight before raising to meet Cohen's gaze. "There are a few Israelis being held at Evin that we are hoping to...release." _Release_ obviously being a code word for _break-out_.

"Are you suggesting that Rabb might be released at the same time?" DiNozzo asked, wondering if they were speaking in code or just talking. Ziva gave a dramatic shrug.

"I am saying that if the walls are breeched and Rabb happens to escape..." She let her voice trail off, making it obvious exactly what she was saying.

And DiNozzo wished it were that simple.

"I have to float it up the chain," he finally said. "It's bad enough that I let Rabb get snatched up, but if I discover where he's held and just let Mossad take care of it without a word to Vance, I'll be packing my bags for a garbage hauler before you can say 'lapse of judgement.' For a Navy captain to be released by anybody but a SEAL team would be a bit embarrassing for, well, people who care." Besides, the US was still wearing egg on its diplomatic face for the Mossad announcement that some of the terrorists from the Yemen debacle a few weeks ago were former inmates at Gitmo, released with the belief that they 'weren't a danger to the United States or any of her allies.' If it came out that Mossad was able to find and release a Navy captain before the Navy could, nobody would be taking the United States military seriously again.

He would just prefer it if politics stayed out of the crime-fighting, terrorist-catching game. Unfortunately, that wasn't the world they lived in. Equally unfortunately, he had to head downstairs and make a phone call to Vance.

* * *

"Took off too quickly, Elf Lord." After the number of years McGee had been working for Gibbs, it didn't too much for him to interpret the older man's moods, and this one wasn't good. This was the 'why didn't you read my mind and be exactly where I wanted you to be' mood. Actually, it was one of his most common moods. But it was still pretty unpleasant.

"Boss?"

"The explosives on Colonel Perry's plane came with fingerprints," Gibbs informed him.

"Petty Officer Thomas Hathaway of the _Bush_'s maintenance crew," Dwayne Wilson jumped in. "Once we had a name, it was pretty straightforward. His financials show that he was almost $400,000 in debt, between student loans for the two years he went to college, a house and a car he couldn't afford, and an online gambling habit he picked up since being assigned to the _Bush._ Agent Atkins has him in custody in the _Bush_'s brig."

"Has he said why he placed the explosives?" McGee asked. Wilson nodded.

"The money," he replied. "He was offered a hundred thousand dollars to place the explosives in Colonel Perry's and Captain McNamee's planes."

"By who?" McGee asked, eyes wide. The eye roll Gibbs offered was enough to tell him that they had been over this already. He felt a pang of guilt in his gut that he had been out when they cracked the case, then another pang at the realization that he had been sitting with—and kissing—Harley while the rest of his team was working.

"Lt. Antonellis," Wilson said, a touch of pride in his voice. "PO Hathaway claims he didn't want to do it, but that Antonellis told him that if he placed the charges right, the planes would just lose power, not explode. He said that Antonellis told him that he used to work fighter manufacturing when he was with Boeing, so he knew that for sure."

"Boeing makes the Super Hornet, not the Hornet," McGee pointed out. "McDonnell Douglas makes the Hornet." Gibbs rolled his eyes.

"You think a PO3 knows that?" he asked rhetorically. He waved for Wilson to continue.

"Regardless of Antonellis' data, Hathaway did what Antonellis wanted, didn't ask why. He just needed the money. Placed the charges on the primary electrical bus and went upon his business. Until Agent Atkins arrested him."

McGee finally sat down, all but collapsing in his chair as he tried to process everything that Wilson just said with everything that he learned during his all-nighter and everything that Harley had said in the hospital. "So Antonellis was behind the crash," he said, more talking to himself than really asking a question. A fellow pilot, someone Harley considered a friend. He felt himself grow angry at the thought. "Why? What did he have to gain? Was he working for the Iranians? Why?"

"Well, I don't know about the last two," Wilson admitted. "But that large Italian family in New Jersey? I don't know if it's more _Godfather _or _Jersey Shore_, but Antonellis had a cousin with some pretty serious gambling debts in Atlantic City. About six months ago, the cousin got a deposit for two hundred grand from Lt. Antonellis."

"About a month after Antonellis joined the squadron," McGee said to himself.

"Right," Wilson agreed. "Antonellis' money appeared in his account from a numbered account in Switzerland. We sent the data to our financial people and the Department of the Treasury to see if they can track it."

McGee frowned, still trying to process everything, trying to reconstruct Antonellis' timeline from what he remembered from what Dwayne and Harley said. "So Antonellis left a well-paying job with Boeing to take a commission in the Marine Corps and goes through fighter training. His first assignment is with Squadron 251. A month into the assignment, he gets a deposit for more than $200,000—"

"Uh, $350,000, actually," Wilson interrupted. "Looks like 200K to his cousin and another 100K to PO Hathaway. Guess he was keeping the remaining 50K for himself."

"Right. So he takes the money, pays for a petty officer to disable two Hornets… for what?" Harley had written a thesis on missile defense in Israel. Her plane was rigged to lose power, not crash; the crash happened because Antonellis couldn't get himself away. She had been tired while on the carrier and had blood work consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning.

He had no idea how those three pieces fit together, if at all. His gut, which Gibbs had definitely taught him to pay attention to, was telling him that Antonellis had been selling his fellow pilot out to the Iranians. Other than wanting money, he didn't know why Antonellis had would do it.

And he didn't know what to make of the carbon monoxide. The whole thing was making his head hurt.

He knew if he wanted answers, he had to talk to someone who knew the Middle East. Even though he had been listening to Dwayne talking from that desk since he had walked back into the bullpen, he still looked up to Ziva's former desk, ready to ask a question. "Is there anything else, McGee?" Dwayne asked, frowning.

"No. Sorry." He felt his face flush in embarrassment. _Really need to get some sleep_, he scolded himself. He glanced over to Gibbs to see his boss watching him with a knowing expression on his face. "I'm going to call Tony," McGee finally said. "See if they've figured out anything we're missing."

"Just got off the phone with him." As one, all in the bullpen turned their heads toward the stairs, where Director Vance was descending, his toothpick firmly in place in the corner of his mouth. "They found Rabb. Or, I guess I should say, Mossad found Rabb. He's in Evin prison in Tehran. Mossad wants to know if we want them to go in and get him for us."

"And?" Gibbs prompted.

"And I said we've already exceeded our number of Mossad extractions of Navy officers for the year. The SECNAV's already given the SEAL team in Bahrain the go. Everything goes according to plan, Captain Rabb'll be safe and sound in American hands by the time the sun rises in Bahrain."

"Uh, that doesn't really answer my questions, Director," McGee said. Vance fixed him with one of those 'why are you talking?' looks.

"We have a Navy captain in custody in Tehran, Agent McGee. Everyone involved in your case is either dead by his own doing or tucked in at Bethesda. Yours can wait. DiNozzo's can't." He shook his head. "You can get whatever information you need from DiNozzo when he calls to announce that he has Rabb. Until then, he's off-limits." He glanced over at Gibbs. "And don't think I won't know if you tell them to ignore me."


	34. Chapter 34

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 34**

**

* * *

**

NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo only knew one thing at the moment: he was far too old for this. And he wasn't going to be getting any younger.

He still didn't know what he was doing there. At the moment, focusing on that issue was a lot easier than trying to figure out what was going to be going down.

Just like he told Ziva he was going to do, as soon as he left the Mossad office for his own, he called Director Vance, receiving an instant confirmation of what he had suspected: there was no way Vance was going to allow Mossad to bail Rabb—and, by extension, the entire United States military—out of this one, not so soon after the Yemen debacle. So he did exactly what DiNozzo suspected he would do: called the SEALs.

And now DiNozzo was in the back of a C-130 carrying equipment bound for Kazakhstan and four SEALs bound for Iran, and he had no idea why he was there, when he had a nice, comfortable office in Bahrain he could be sitting in until news of Rabb's extraction came in.

Actually, he knew exactly why. When he went back upstairs to the Mossad office to tell Ziva and her team not to worry about Rabb, she had gotten that funny expression on her face that was more than enough to tell him that she was up to something. And then she followed that up with a comment about not being home for dinner that night, and he knew exactly what that something was.

So much for her claims that her job was largely administrative and that she was being put to pasture.

That left him with two options: sitting in his office all night, waiting to hear from both the SEAL team leader and Ziva that they had achieved whatever objective they were going for and were now heading back to Bahrain, or going along with said SEAL team and staying too occupied to be worried.

That was hardly a question.

But it still left him on a C-130 with a SEAL team. This was beyond insane.

He wasn't going to be doing anything SEAL-like, fortunately. The hatch of the C-130 would be opening, allowing the four SEALs to jump out for a HALO—high-altitude, low-opening—jump, followed by some sort of SEAL-type tactics that will lead them to the prison, get Rabb out, and get back to whatever vehicle would be taking them to safety, all without the Iranians finding them and killing them first. Or starting an international incident. Meanwhile, DiNozzo was staying in the plane while they snuck back out of Iranian airspace and into Kazakhstan. It wasn't exactly safe, but it wasn't nearly as dangerous as what his fellow passengers would be doing.

Or, for that matter, what Ziva and Cohen and whoever else they'd be wrangling up would be doing. The more he thought about this, the worse the idea seemed: there would be _two_ teams of highly-training, highly-dangerous operatives there at the same time, both trying to get their own people out.

Christ. Talk about your bad ideas. If they didn't all end up killed, by each other or by the Iranians, it would be a miracle.

* * *

Ziva David knew that planning on making the Mossad jailbreak on the same evening as the SEAL team would be rescuing Captain Rabb wasn't the best idea ever, but the stone had started rolling, and it was too late to stop it now. She frowned at the term; somehow, it didn't seem right. There was something about rolling stones and moss, right? She wondered what exactly that was supposed to mean.

Apparently, she wasn't the only one on her team who wasn't so sure that this was the best idea ever. "It would not have been too much of a problem to delay this a week," Cohen murmured, not even opening his eyes from where he had collapsed against the bags of various supplies in the helicopter. "I am still readjusting from being on vacation."

"In our line of work, readjusting takes less than a second," Ziva replied. "You were readjusted before you left the beach."

"That is true," Cohen acknowledged. "But it does not change the fact that there is no need to do this extraction tonight. Our people have already been in prison for quite some time. They would not even notice another week."

"No, they would not," Ziva admitted. "But we have the helicopter now and are already on our way. There is no use in delaying. The plan is not complicated."

"No," Cohen agreed. "But the presence of another extraction team does make things a bit more complicated. What is the point in having a _katsa_ who is sleeping with an American agent if she does not use the information from him in planning our operations?"

"Do not bring Tony into this," Ziva snapped. Truth be told, she wasn't too happy with him for calling Vance and getting the SEALs involved in the first place. If he had just let her and Cohen take care of Rabb, there would be no complications involving a second team of operatives on the same turf at the same time.

"This will not be simple," Cohen said warningly. Ziva rolled her eyes; as if she didn't already know that. There was a reason why she was coming along instead of just setting Cohen free to do his thing. He was a talented operative, there was no doubt about that, but planning wasn't exactly his strong suit. And planning on his feet usually ended in more casualties than Ziva would have liked.

"We will have to hope that Tony has warned the SEAL team that there may be another rescue operation going on." Fortunately, their respective prisoners were in completely different wings of the prison. Even if Tony dropped the stone, they still shouldn't have any problems with the SEALs. In a perfect world.

And this was far from a perfect world. She knew Tony well enough to know that expression on his face when she said she wasn't going to be home for dinner, and knew that there was no way that he was going to be sitting around, twiddling his thumbs until word got in on how the extraction of Rabb went. He was going to be on that C-130 with the SEAL team. She just hoped he wasn't stupid enough to be on the ground with them.

* * *

"Sir, we're approaching the drop site." DiNozzo blinked himself at the voice, to see the SEAL team leader, Lt. John Bowers, kneeling in front of him.

"Sounds good," he finally managed.

"Just so we're clear on this, sir, we're dropping just outside of Tehran, making the extraction, then onto the Caspian Sea and up to Kazakhstan, where you're going to be waiting to take us all back home."

"That's the goal."

"Sounds perfectly clear, sir. And that team of Israelis?"

Ah, yes. The team of Israelis. "I don't know their exact plan," DiNozzo admitted. "I just know that they're going to be at Evin tonight."

"Sounds like it's going to be a busy place."

"Probably," DiNozzo agreed.

"And how'd you hear about what the Israelis are going to be up to?"

Somehow, DiNozzo didn't think telling the SEAL lieutenant that he was sleeping with a Mossad _katsa_ was the best way to go about that. "NCIS and Mossad have somewhat of a working relationship."

"Seem like strange bedfellows if you ask me, sir."

_You have no idea, Lieutenant_. Instead of saying that, he just smiled thinly and shrugged a shoulder. Bowers seemed to accept that, though, giving DiNozzo a nod in return before he headed over to rejoin his three men in their last minute preparations for the mission, a mission DiNozzo could only hope was going to go as smoothly as Bowers made it out to seem.

And then the jump light turned green, and the mission had officially begun.

* * *

The helicopter carrying the two Mossad operatives belonged to a Libyan businessman who believed he was carrying two employees of a Middle Eastern oil conglomerate to a meeting in Tehran. Ziva made sure to pay him enough that he wouldn't wonder why they needed transportation at night, and he waved them off with a large grin on his face after dropping them off at the designated helipad, probably already figuring out what he would be spending his money on. If he was smart, it would be on a new helicopter. The one they came in seemed only a few rides away from falling from the sky.

Tehran was practically littered with government vehicles, and it took Ziva and Cohen barely five minutes before they broke into and hotwired one. "And now the fun time begins," Cohen joked, now speaking Farsi. Ziva, who had only a rudimentary knowledge of the language, just smiled and nodded in reply.

Getting onto a military base, in any country, isn't necessarily easy, but it isn't exactly hard, either. When their newly-acquired government vehicle rolled up to the gate surrounding Evin, it only took some forged papers and angry-sounding words from Cohen before the guards waved them through, no longer concerned about why there was a team of security experts from the capitol performing an inspection in the middle of the night.

And that was when the easy part of the mission ended.

The three Israelis—two Mossad operatives and one IDF sergeant—that they were there to release were all being held in the same wing of the prison, and perhaps in alignment with how Iranians felt about Israelis in general, it was the wing with the highest security. At this point, forged papers and angry words would probably only get them in the same position as the three they had come to release: locked up in one of the world's most notorious prisons.

So they took a slightly different approach, one that left an Iranian guard shot quietly in the back of the head by Cohen's silenced pistol.

The younger operative checked quickly around him to ensure that nobody had heard the shot before Ziva helped him drag it into the surveillance room, where another bullet went into another guard's skull, as quietly as the first. "Quickly," Ziva hissed at Cohen as she helped him out of his clothing and into those of the first guard. "Do not forget the badge."

"As if I could. That is the point of this," he hissed back, securing the ID card to the left pocket flap of his new uniform, exactly where its previous owner had worn it. He didn't look anything like the guard he had just shot, but from a passing glance, it would have to do.

"You go on. I will stay here and watch the monitors," Ziva told him. Saying so was pointless; they had already discussed this. Still, Cohen gave a perfunctory nod, understanding her nerves and the need to say something.

He casually left the office, looking as if it was his turn for rounds. "Entering the secured area," he said in Arabic—not as convincing as Farsi, but far less incriminating than Hebrew—as he scanned the ID badge over the computer sensor. Unsurprisingly, the door slid open for him.

"You are clear," Ziva replied, also speaking in Arabic. She made a mental note to herself to brush up on her Farsi—now that she was stationed so close to Iran, she didn't know when she might need it. "The first two are in the seventh cell to your right. The sergeant is in the ninth to your left."

"Got it." Even in the quiet tones they were speaking, it was enough to stir a few of the sleeping prisoners. Cohen hoped none of them would wake up enough to realize that they had never seen this guard before.

All things considered, releasing the three Israelis was fairly easy—the cell doors slid open with another swipe of his badge. The problem was, they slid open rather loudly. Most of the prisoners were now awake, and it didn't take much to realize that three of their fellow prisoners were being escorted out of their cells without handcuffs, and they were vocally less than pleased with that development.

And then the general alarm went off, loud enough to make Cohen want to cover his ears, and complete with flashing lights that made him hope that nobody around him was epileptic. "What happened?" he snapped, directing the comment to his _katsa_.

"I do not know," she replied, just as tense. "I do not believe it was us."

"Then we can assume our American friends have arrived."

"Assume whatever you want. I just want to get out of here."

"Agreed." She appeared out of the guards' office and the five began running, as fast as the emaciated and out-of-shape former prisoners could manage.

They almost made it back to their commandeered vehicle when shots rang out. "It is the SEALs," Cohen said tightly, doing his best to push their prisoners along and behind a wall.

"How do you know?" Ziva replied.

"They did not tell us to stop. Prison guards would have." She had to admit, he made an excellent point, which meant she had to make an executive decision. Assuming Tony had forewarned the SEALs that they would be there, they would know that they were friendlies. So if Cohen was right, identifying themselves would get the bullets to stop and allow both teams to make it to safety. But if Cohen was wrong, identifying themselves would only make the Iranians angrier.

Another shot rang out, this time followed by a grunt of pain from Cohen. "Fuck," he moaned. The fact that he was speaking was enough to tell Ziva that he would live. They would have to figure out how bad the injury was later. But she had a decision to make now.

They were outgunned, possibly by a team from the United States Special Forces. There was really only one thing they could do.

"Ceasefire!" she shouted in English. Maybe it was out of surprise, but they did just that. She tentatively stepped out from the wall they had ducked behind to a group of five men, four of them armed and pointing their weapons directly at her. "We are friends," she continued. "And we need each other's help to get of here alive."


	35. Chapter 35

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 35**

_A/N: Completely off the subject, but I've been watching the HBO series, _The Pacific_ and wow. I might have to try to write a WWII story featuring Tomblin's grandparents, but I don't think I could do it justice. To sum up my thoughts on the matter, one of the main characters (a Marine) was at a Navy hospital. I have to agree with the Navy doc: "I don't know what this war is like."_

* * *

Lieutenant John Bowers motioned for his men to hold their fire. "Mossad?" he asked after a long minute. The dark-haired woman smiled thinly and nodded, lowering her upraised arms.

"I am glad Tony did not neglect to tell you that we would be here," she said. Bowers frowned, then realized that she was probably talking about Agent DiNozzo, from the plane ride over. "We have a vehicle," she continued, tilting her head toward a parking lot.

"Perhaps we should acquire a larger one." The voice, as accented as that of the woman, belonged to the man in the prison guard uniform, the one they had been shooting at. "I do not think the one we have will be large enough for ten people."

The woman nodded her agreement. She turned back to the Americans, her expression blank for what was probably only a second, but seemed much longer, before she turned back to her fellow Israeli. "You get the vehicle. I will stay with the others."

She was obviously in charge, as if the fact that she had been the one who called for a ceasefire wasn't enough evidence of that. The man in the guard uniform nodded once, and then to Bowers' surprise, holstered his weapon before walking away briskly, nowhere near to the run the SEAL lieutenant would have expected. "Not in much of a hurry, is he?" he muttered darkly.

"Which looks more suspicious?" the Israeli woman snapped at him, her voice low. "A guard running for the exit during a prison break, or a guard looking official?" He didn't say anything, but she did have a point.

It was probably two minutes later that a transport truck appeared as close to their position as possible without attracting too much attention, and the nine remaining—four SEALs, the captain they had come to rescue, the Mossad woman in charge, and the three Israelis still in prison garb—made their ways to the vehicle. "Does anyone speak Farsi?" the Mossad woman asked.

"I do," PO2 Chris Delaney volunteered. She took one look at him, with his scraggly blond hair and thick blond beard, and simply raised an eyebrow.

"That would look beyond suspicious," she informed them. She studied the remaining SEALs with a frown, and Bowers knew what she was doing: assessing who should sit up front with her operative to gather the fewest questions, and Bowers knew who that would be: him. Half-Guatemalan, he was the only one on his team with the coloring to look even close to Iranian. Unfortunately, his languages were Spanish and French; prior to five months ago, he was the assistant officer-in-charge for a team that operated entirely in South America. Besides, he was most definitely dressed like a SEAL, not an Iranian prison guard.

She must have come to the same conclusion as he did. "I will sit up front," she declared, holstering her weapon. "Everyone else, get in the back and cover up. And remain quiet."

Bowers didn't like taking orders from this Israeli, whoever she was, but she seemed to know what she was doing, as much as anyone would know what they were doing in this situation; he couldn't image even Israelis would be adept at breaking into an Iranian prison and breaking prisoners out.

He and his men and their rescued captain did as she asked, piling into the back with the three Israeli prisoners, covering up with the oily blankets they found there, making themselves look like shapeless cargo, while she climbed into the front passenger seat, slipping a simple head covering over her hair. The truck rolled forward toward the gate and slowed down, and it was only because his hearing was conditioned to pick up such things, registered the _pop_ of a silenced gunshot before they continued forward again. So much for the woman's need for a ruse and someone to speak Farsi; apparently Mossad preferred to deal with gate guards in a much more suspicious, much more permanent manner.

These guys were insane, and that was saying a lot coming from a SEAL lieutenant.

"So which of you is the corpsman?" the man driving asked a few minutes after their violent pass through the gate. "Because one of you shot me. It is not serious, but bandages would be appreciated once we get to where we are going. Where are we going, anyway?"

Even though he couldn't see expressions from where he was under the drop cloth, Bowers knew the woman didn't have a good answer for that when there was a several second pause. "It will not be long before word of the prison breach gets out. The airport will not be a possibility."

"This is true, except it is prison _break_," the driver's voice replied, sounding amused. "Has Agent DiNozzo taught you nothing over the years?"

So the 'Tony' she referred to _was_ Agent DiNozzo, even though Bowers couldn't begin to understand where a Mossad operative and NCIS special agent would have even crossed paths, much less been doing together for years. But he did have an answer to the 'where to go' question. "There's going to be a boat waiting for us on the Caspian," he said. "We can share transportation. Assuming no one here is wanted in Kazakhstan."

There was another pause in the conversation up front, and then there was sudden light as the blanket was lifted over Bowers' head, revealing the frowning Mossad woman, her hair still covered. "We are beyond the base. You can come out of under the sheets now." That got a snort of laughter from the man driving, but he didn't say anything. She looked over at him and rolled her eyes. "Are you wanted in Kazakhstan?" she asked, somewhat sarcastically.

"Not that I know of," he replied cheekily. "You?"

"I do not believe so."

"Would not matter anyway," the driver replied. "It has been so long since you have operated in the Middle East that Kazakhstan would have undoubtedly gone through a regime change or two in the interim. If you were wanted, it is likely that whoever wanted you is no longer employed by the Kazakh government." The woman rolled her eyes again before turning back to Bowers.

"We would be glad to join you. Thank you," she said with exaggerated politeness.

"You're welcome. Maybe before we get too comfortable on the boat, we should introduce ourselves. I'm John."

The two in the front looked at each other for a few seconds. "You can call me Joshua," the driver finally said. "And you can call her Mossad Officer Lisa."

The woman—Lisa?—muttered something in a harsh language that could have been Hebrew. "Do not think I will not add another bullet hole to the one you already have," she said warningly. "And then I am going back to DC and doing the same thing to McGee for writing that…_book_."

"I think you mean, _those books_," the driver—Joshua?—corrected. "And I have read them all."

"I can have you sent to Yemen full-time."

"But you will not, because that will leave you alone with Avrum in the office, and without me as a buffer, you will kill him in frustration. And then you will be out an analyst."

"That is probably true," Lisa admitted. She glanced into the back again. "It is a long story," she informed Bowers. "Where will this boat be?"

"Uh, I've got the coordinates," Bowers replied, handing his Garmin forward. Lisa studied the device for a moment before murmuring something to Joshua. He gave a single nod.

"That is Nowshahr," he said. "It is almost three hours away." He glanced over at Lisa and murmured something in Hebrew. She frowned and nodded before turning back to Bowers.

"We will pull over once we are clear of Tehran," she informed him. "I will resume driving and allow your medic to bandage Joshua's arm." Guiltily, Bowers realized that he had forgotten about the injury, but a quick glance at the man's arm was all he needed for the reminder: it was completely covered in blood, and more was still dripping onto the floor of the truck. Although in retrospect he was glad the guy was still alive, Bowers couldn't help but be annoyed that his SEALs hadn't managed to kill the guy. It should have only taken one bullet.

Less than ten minutes had passed before Lisa deemed them far enough from the prison to pull over and switch positions, and somehow—Bowers had no idea how, given how wild the woman's driving was—Delaney, the team's medic, managed to bandage Joshua's arm. Somewhere in there, he had drifted off to sleep, and it was only the cessation of movement that woke him. "We are here," Lisa said crisply.

"And so's the boat, Johnny boy," PO2 Derek Gelp informed him, nodding toward the dock.

"Excellent," Bowers replied. He grabbed his rifle and made his way toward his ride back home.


	36. Chapter 36

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 36**

_

* * *

_

It was probably in the fifth hour of waiting for the boat to appear at the docks in Kazakhstan that DiNozzo realized he never called Gibbs and reported what he had learned from Mossad, about how the Iranians were buying information regarding Capt. McNamee in order to take down the Israelis.

Oops. He'd call them later. After he saw for himself that both Ziva and Rabb were safe and unharmed. He'd settle for relatively unharmed, really.

It had been six and a half hours—six and a half hours of the SEAL liaison coming down to where DiNozzo was waiting at the docks to inform him that they wouldn't be there any time soon, six and a half hours of consuming only black coffee, and a lot of it—before he saw the lights that could only be coming from a boat heading directly for the dock he had been standing on. As they got closer, he could make out the shapes of two men standing at the bow, weapons at the ready. SEALs.

Thank God.

The boat arrived at the dock, the four SEALs jumping off to secure it to the dock, and DiNozzo felt his heart just about stop in realization: there were more people than he expected on the boat. Five more, in fact.

_Ziva_.

Neither of them said anything before she was in his arms, him holding her so tightly he was afraid she might break, if breaking Ziva David were possible.

He didn't know how long they stood there like that on the docks, neither of them moving or speaking, until he finally, reluctantly, pulled away. "You okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "I am fine," she replied. He nodded as well before leaning down and kissing her.

"You're sure?" he asked when they separated. "You're not hit or anything?" His hand made its way to her side, to the skin that he knew was still pink under her clothes from an all-too-recent graze by a bullet.

"No, Tony," she said, sounding amused at the question. "It was Cohen's turn."

Judging by the tone she said that in and the chuckle from the Mossad operative in question, it wasn't that serious. "It is only a flesh wound," Cohen joked.

"I think you need to be missing a limb for that to be funny."

"Sir, you should probably get that checked out at a hospital as soon as you can," one of the SEALs commented to Cohen as he walked by.

"I will be sure to do that," Cohen replied. DiNozzo was pretty sure he wouldn't.

Remembering what the mission had been about, DiNozzo finally began glancing around in search of Captain Rabb. Fortunately, he didn't have to search long. It had been almost a decade since he had seen the captain in person, but that didn't stop DiNozzo from recognizing the former murder suspect. "Captain Rabb," he greeted, offering his hand. "How're you feeling?"

"Better now," the captain replied with a wide grin. He blinked in sudden recognition. "Special Agent DiNozzo. From Lt. Singer's investigation."

"That'll be me."

"I never got the chance to thank you for that."

"Just doing my job, Captain."

"Well, now it appears I have something else to thank you for."

"Just doing my job," DiNozzo repeated. He grinned and tilted his head toward Ziva. "Actually, that wasn't really me. Mossad found where they were keeping you and the Lt. Bowers' team got you out. I just sat here and drank a lot of coffee. A lot of coffee. I don't think I'll be sleeping again for a while."

Rabb smiled at that. "Well, I still wish there was something I could do to thank you."

"Actually…" DiNozzo's voice trailed off as he glanced at Ziva, who was looking back with a quizzical expression. He turned back to Rabb to see him wearing a similar expression. "Can you do weddings?"

"What?" both Ziva and Rabb asked in unison. DiNozzo chose to ignore the captain for the moment and gave Ziva his full attention.

"You said to ask again when the time's right," he reminded her. "We've been together for almost three years and worked together for three years before that. I've never had another partner I've known or trusted more than you. I've never known anyone I've loved more than you. I moved to Bahrain for you. You changed your job for me. We're renting a _house_ together! If it's not the right time to ask you to marry me, I don't know when that would be."

For a long minute, she didn't say anything before she slowly nodded. "Yes," she finally said. "Yes. I will marry you."

Tony couldn't think of anything eloquent to say that, so he went with the next best thing and kissed her again. Somewhere, he registered Rabb's laugh behind him. "You should hear the story of my engagement sometime," the captain remarked. "Now, is there a plane here to take us back to Bahrain?"

* * *

Before they could get to anything else, Gibbs had to be called about what Mossad had found out about Captain McNamee and what the Iranians were doing to get her, and Rabb had to be debriefed about his time in Iran and how he had gotten there, and even though he was distracted by his upcoming nuptials, DiNozzo was pretty sure he had the situation figured out. Lt. Antonellis, the pilot who had died in the crash, was _La Massab_, the source who was being paid for information on McNamee. He had paid a petty officer to plant the charge that led to the power outage that led to the crash that took his life. Most of that Gibbs had already known; the only thing DiNozzo really helped with was the timeline of Antonellis' payments and his motives for selling out his fellow pilot. He had already been assigned to Squadron 251 before he was approached by the Iranians, who approached him for the reasons Gibbs and company had already identified: he was very close to his family, including family with gambling debts to all the wrong people.

Where Rabb came in was a little bit more complicated. The captain informed DiNozzo and Freiler that he had been on the runway in Bahrain when he was approached by Agent Loyd—who had identified himself to Rabb as 'Agent Brown'—and told of a plot to cause an F-18 to crash off an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. Loyd had never told him how he came across this information—something DiNozzo was willing to assume was from Loyd's work in the CIA's Iran division—but during the flight, Rabb managed to get out of the CIA agent that his role was, if necessary, to fly the plane back to safety.

He had never figured out why the plane ended up in Iran, instead of the _U.S.S. George H.W. Bush_. With Loyd dead, they'll probably never know.

They had been at it for almost two hours when both DiNozzo and Rabb determined that they had probably learned as much as they possibly could from the other. "So," Rabb said, the beginnings of a true grin appearing on his face. "About that other request you had for me?"

"Other request?" Freiler asked with a frown. DiNozzo just grinned and reached for his phone.

"Hey, Sweetcheeks," he said into the phone. "You ready to come down?"

_"I will be right there."_

Freiler was frowning as DiNozzo hung up the phone. "Does Mossad need to debrief Captain Rabb as well?"

DiNozzo grinned as the back door to the office opened. "No, not quite," he replied.

"Not quite what?" Ziva asked as she headed to his desk. She had gone back to the apartment to change during the debriefing, her shapeless garment exchanged for a simple dress Tony had forgotten she had and an engagement ring purchased more than two years on her left ring finger. He would have asked how she knew where to find it, but she was, after all, a trained spy. Hiding things from her wasn't exactly possible. Cohen was trailing close behind Ziva with a large bandage on his arm and even larger smirk on his face. "Not quite what?" Ziva repeated.

"Not quite here for a debriefing," DiNozzo filled her in. "You brought your minion?"

"I am not small, cycloptic, or yellow," Cohen pointed out.

"Good job on the movie reference," DiNozzo acknowledged. "Can you get this one? 'I—"

"Tony," Ziva interrupted. "You two can determine which of you is a bigger movie butt—"

"Buff," both DiNozzo and Cohen interrupted. Ziva rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath in Hebrew.

"Are we ready?" she asked, directing the question at Rabb.

"As soon as you are," the captain replied. "I have the license right here."

"License for what?" Freiler asked, clearly confused.

"You wanna be a witness?" DiNozzo asked him.

"Witness for what?" he replied, now sounding exasperated.

"These two are finally getting hitched," Cohen explained, gesturing at DiNozzo and Ziva. "I am here to witness in case Mossad has any questions."

Rabb frowned at the comment and studied Ziva for a few seconds. "Is there anything that needs to be done for Israel?" he asked.

"No," Ziva replied. "There are no civil wedding ceremonies in Israel, but they do recognize weddings performed elsewhere."

"What _happened_ on that mission?" Freiler asked, his eyes wide. "Ziva, are you wearing an engagement ring? Can someone please catch me up?"

"Rabb asked if there's anything he could do to thank us for freeing him. I figured officiating a wedding would make us about even," DiNozzo replied with a shrug.

"So… you went from being freaked out about a house to deciding to get married? Did I miss something here?"

"Do not question it," Cohen advised him. "Just agree to be a witness."

"Well, okay," Freiler said slowly. "_Mazel tov_, I guess."

"That is what you say after they are married," Cohen informed him. "What do they say after the vows in a Mormon ceremony? Or is that one of those things that those of us who are not Mormon are not to know?"

DiNozzo smirked at Cohen's innocent-seeming questions about Mormonism and quickly covered it up. "Everyone ready?" he asked. He turned to both Ziva and Rabb and received a nod in reply. He ignored Cohen and Freiler.

"Then let's get started," Rabb began. He smiled as he glanced down at the words he had printed off between filling out the marriage license and beginning the debriefing. "We are here to participate in a wedding. By this act we unite Tony and Ziva as husband and wife. Tony and Ziva, you stand before me having requested that I marry you. Do you both do this of your own free will, with no pressure upon you from other persons?"

"We do," both DiNozzo and Ziva replied.

"Then let us continue," Rabb said. "Tony, if it is your desire to become the husband of Ziva, then repeat after me."

They both repeated their vows, and Rabb declared them to be husband and wife, and then Tony kissed Ziva, and Cohen and Freiler both offered their _mazel tov_'s at the right time, just as the sun began to rise over Bahrain.

DiNozzo was fairly sure he had never had a more chaotic day, and hoped he never had another one like that, but at the same time, he couldn't imagine a better one.


	37. Chapter 37

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 37**

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Because there hadn't been much in terms of forensics involved in the MCRT's current case, Abby Sciuto had been keeping herself occupied with her backlog of work on cases for other teams—the Pentagon team, the subordinate offices, expert testimony for civilian cases—and baby-sitting McGee. Ever since his all-nighter that he pulled with Dwayne the other night, he'd been a little bit off, and not even the best of her interrogation techniques had gotten anything out of him as far as why.

He had disappeared a few hours before, when Tony called to give an update. Abby wanted to go upstairs with him—she hadn't talked to Tony since Captain Rabb went missing, and she was definitely going through DiNozzo withdrawal—but McGee, with a complete lack of humor at all, said that wasn't a social call and that she should stay down in the lab, where she could get something accomplished without getting in anyone's way.

Get in anyone's way. She'd show him getting in someone's way.

She was halfway through a DNA analysis from the Annapolis office—sexual assault on a female midshipman, never a fun case—and absently singing along to the new song from _Cozy Cordaites_ when she heard the tell-tale siren wail of a new email. Since she was at a forced stopping point in the analysis—a forced stopping point she was planning on spending on checking on the fingerprint analysis from the case in Norfolk, but a forced stopping point nonetheless—she clicked on the email.

She handled some of the most gruesome cases the Navy had ever seen. She once dated a guy who cleaned up crime scenes. She slept in a coffin. But what she saw on the screen shocked her more than anything else she could imagine.

She actually screamed.

"McGee!" she called out once she was able to articulate words again, before she remembered that he had gone upstairs and hadn't come back down. It took her a few fumbles with the phone before she was able to grasp it, and a few more fumbles before she hit the speed dial for the senior field agent's desk.

She really needed to change the label from 'The Big D' to something more reflective of McGee. Maybe McGoo. Or McGiggle.

That wasn't the point. Focus, Abby. Focus. Big news to be shared.

_"NCIS, Special Agent McGee."_

"Timmy!" She practically screamed into the phone and tried to get herself to calm down. "Tim, you need to come down here. Immediately. Or faster than immediately. Find a way to invent a time machine and be down here five minutes ago."

In her excitement, she hung up the phone before getting a response. Oh, he better be coming down, or she'd… Actually, she didn't know what she would do. She was too keyed up to think of something creative.

Fortunately for McGee—and for her lack of creative juices—the elevator door _ping_ed open and McGee stepped out. "Timmy!" Abby called out, rushing forward as fast as she could in her platform boots to drag him forward. "You have to see this!"

"Abby, I'm trying to finish a case—"

"That's not nearly as important as this."

"Abby—"

"Just _look_, McGee," she said in exasperation, pointing at the screen. McGee gave an indulgent sigh and reluctantly turned his attention to the screen. Abby, already knowing what his reaction would be, was already bringing up a videoconference screen on the next monitor.

The video call connected at the exact same time as McGee's completely unedited words of surprise, which were met with laughter from the two people on the monitor. _"And hello to you, too, McGee," _Ziva's sing-song voice said from Abby's speakers.

"Wha—I mean, is—" the MCRT's senior field agent was completely at a loss for words and just gave up. Abby, on the other hand, never gave up.

"Is this for real?" she demanded of her former coworkers. "Or is this just your way of letting you know that you got Rabb? No, that doesn't make sense; you called us a few hours ago to let us know that you got Rabb and everyone was okay. So—"

"You guys are really married?" McGee interrupted, apparently having regained his ability to speak. He gestured at the other screen. "I mean, this is a real marriage certificate, right? Because if this is your idea of some sort of joke..." His voice trailed off, the threat remaining unspoken.

_"Yes, McGiggle, we really are married,"_ Tony informed them from Bahrain, where the sun was apparently just rising.

"But you don't just wake up one morning and decide to get married, which means you've been planning this and keeping it from us, and that is not nice, Anthony DiNozzo," Abby scolded. "I thought we were your friends, Tony. No—I thought we were _family_."

The newlyweds looked at each other. _"Actually, Abby—"_ Tony began, before Ziva cut him off.

_"We did not wake up in the morning and decide to get married_," she informed the forensic scientist. _"It was not until we returned from the mission that it was decided."_

"And you got married right then?"

_"Yeah, pretty much,"_ Tony replied.

"Congratulations," McGee finally declared. "Seriously, guys. Congratulations. I'm really happy for you."

_"Thank you, Tim," _Ziva said.

_"Yeah, thanks, McGoo. Glad _you're _happy."_ There was some sarcasm behind his words, but he was still smiling, so Abby figured she wasn't in too much trouble.

"I am happy," she said defensively. "Just... surprised. Like, really, really surprised. Like discovering that Santa is really your mom and she wraps all of the presents at midnight on Christmas Eve while watching the Home Shopping Network surprised." Now both Tony and Ziva had that ridiculous smile on. "So where are you guys registered? I would normally buy something more individualized than that, but individualized takes time, and, well, you kinda sprung this on us."

They looked at each other again, over in Bahrain. _"Abby,"_ Tony finally said. _"We got married about four hours after deciding to get married. That doesn't exactly leave a lot of time for running over to Macy's and setting up a registry."_

_"You do not have to get us anything, Abby,"_ Ziva protested.

_"Don't say that,"_ Tony scolded her.

"Of course I have to get you something," Abby said impatiently. "That's why people get married, so they can get all sorts of stuff that they should buy for themselves but don't really want to."

_"In that case, you can get us whatever you want,"_ Ziva replied.

"So the complete series of _Magnum_ on Blu-Ray for Tony and a new knife for Ziva."

_"Actually, Abs, I already have _Magnum_, and the last thing Ziva needs is another weapon."_

The lab doors opened before Abby could suggest another set of gifts, admitted one Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. For a long minute, none of the four previously in the conversation spoke.

It was Gibbs who broke the silence. "Been a while since you slept, DiNozzo?" he asked before taking a sip of his coffee.

_"Well, yeah, Boss, but there was this all-night mission to get Rabb and—"_

"Cause you have to be either stupid or sleep-deprived to go off and get married. I was betting on sleep-deprived, because I don't want to think that the last ten years spent training you were a complete waste."

Tony smiled at that and Ziva rolled her eyes good-naturedly. _"Thank you, Gibbs,"_ she said sarcastically. To Abby's surprise, the supervisory field agent chuckled.

"Congratulations, both of you. Now go home and get some sleep. You've earned it."

* * *

McGee decided to get all of his paperwork done in one fell swoop, instead of spacing it out over a few days, so by the time he was finished, the sun was rising over DC and he was surprised to find that he had pulled yet another all-nighter on this case.

But at least it was over. Completely over.

Although the end of a case usually called for celebratory drinks, he just wasn't feeling it. For one, it was breakfast time, and he didn't particularly care for mimosas. So instead of heading to the usual bar—without the usual people, really—he got in his car and drove north. He already told Gibbs he was taking a comp-time day, and to his mild surprise, Gibbs didn't protest, just sent him off with orders of getting some sleep, because he still expected his senior field agent at his desk at 0700 the next day.

Well, at least it was the same Gibbs.

He headed north into Maryland with every intention of going home and getting some sleep—or, more likely, getting in some time for writing—which was why he was mildly surprised to find that he had turned to head into Bethesda instead of Silver Spring.

The guard at the gate merely nodded McGee through toward Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and then he had the same struggle to find a parking place in the visitor's lot that plagued him every time he had come to the hospital.

Harley was sitting up in bed when he entered her room, dressed casually in jeans and the Johns Hopkins Swimming and Diving hoodie that McGee remembered so well from years ago, supervising Naomi Leeman as the blond packed Harley's things into a duffle bag. "Making your great escape?" he asked lightly. Harley smiled at him, a wide grin that lit up her entire face.

"They're discharging me," she said. "I have a room at the Navy Lodge and everything. It'll be nice to get away from the every four hour vital sign checks and 0400 blood draws, even though I'm not actually leaving base. So what brings you here?"

He realized that he hadn't visited her since the end of his last all-nighter, when they ended up kissing in the courtyard, and realized just how much she hadn't yet been informed of: the confirmation that the Iranians were behind everything and that they worked through Antonellis, the role Rabb played in the whole scenario, the fact that everything had been wrapped up and reports signed. And she especially didn't know the most important part; at least, the most important part to her. "I have some good news for you," he said. "For both of you, actually. Your squadron is going to be on their way home."

They both gave that girly scream of excitement McGee knew all too well from having a sister before Naomi excused herself to try to call her husband, leaving McGee and McNamee in the room alone. "So… on your way out," he said, somewhat uncomfortably.

"On my way out," she confirmed. "Kinda. I won't know how far out until after the inquest, in another four weeks."

"How far do you want to be out?" he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. She shrugged her good shoulder and looked away.

"I don't really know," she admitted. "If I had my choice, it would be back to Beaufort. That's my squadron, my boys. But I guess, well, staying around here wouldn't be too bad, like Quantico or Patuxent River something." She turned back to him. "What did you find out about the case? Is there something that makes you think the inquest might go one way or the other?"

_Plenty, _he wanted to tell her, wanting to explain everything that had happened and figure out together what that might mean for her life in the time after her inquest, after her shoulder had healed well enough for her to fly again. But there was too much to be said while standing in a hospital room waiting for her friend to come back. "How about if I take you out to breakfast, after you get checked into the Navy Lodge," he offered. "I'll explain everything."

"You don't have to do that," she protested.

"I know," he replied. "But I still want to."

She studied him for a minute before she slowly nodded, a smile beginning to play on her lips. "Okay," she agreed. "Breakfast it is. But you better tell me everything."

"Don't worry," he assured her. "I won't leave anything out."


	38. Chapter 38

**Fallen Angels: Chapter 38-Epilogue**

_A/N: In celebration of the 2 hr delay at work thanks to the snow, I decided to post the last chapter a day early. Thanks for coming along with me on this journey :) More author's notes to come at the bottom._

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Captain Harlan McNamee nervously adjusted the sleeves of her class A uniform jacket, the fabric feeling stiff and unfamiliar under her fingers, her whole mind and body yearning for the comfort of her flight suit and the knowledge of being about to fly again that came from wearing that garment.

Not this time. And maybe after today, never again.

She let out her breath in a rush, feeling her lungs empty before they began to fill again, as if on their own accord, and focused on the simple mechanics of breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale again. It was nice and routine and comforting; no matter what might happen that day, she would still continue to inhale and exhale and that would go on as if nothing had changed.

God, she was becoming melodramatic in her old age. She hadn't thought about anything in the same way after she turned thirty.

"Sit down," Tim McGee scolded lightly from where he was all but collapsed on a wooden bench in the courthouse, still wearing the crumpled tan trench coat he had worn at work, an expression of fatigue on his face and a paper cup of coffee in his hand. "Your pacing is making me tired."

"I'm too wound up to sit down," she said, continuing to pace.

"I'm too tired to watch you wear a hole into the floor," he replied. She felt a surge of sympathy; he was in the middle of a case and had probably been sleeping an average of three hours a night for the past week, a feeling she remembered well from running flight ops.

God, she missed running flight ops. And she was probably still an hour away from finding out if she'd ever be sliding into the cockpit of a flying government vehicle again.

She still couldn't believe that the day of the inquest had come already. The last four weeks had gone by in a blur, mostly consisting of physical therapy appointments, doctor's appointments, time spent in the gym, time spent wishing she were working and wishing she could be flying, dinners in Bethesda and Silver Spring, more nights spent in Tim's apartment than her hotel room. To make it easier for her to get around, he signed out an NCIS Charger for himself and gave her the keys to his Audi TT, a car that was really fun to drive and definitely changed her mind about the need to have a sports car. Between doctors appointments and fast drives through Rock Creek Park, she passed long hours of boredom by re-reading the _Deep Six_ series and just about anything else she could find in his apartment, waiting for him to come home so they could play video games until they went to bed—he had a flying game that she could whip him with one-handed, much to his grudging admiration—and she had never felt more comfortable with another person in her life—including her overbearing southern mother. She went out with his friends and coworkers after they finished cases, visited with his sister over coffee, met his parents, and for as much as she wanted to go back to her old life, she found herself hoping that she wouldn't be going back to Beaufort, and it was because of him. He was making the whole thing bearable, and maybe—maybe—it would be something more.

If someone had told her twelve years ago—or even twelve months ago—that she would even consider letting a guy influence her career plans, even a little bit, she would have laughed. And if that person had told her it would be her TA for a freshman biomedical engineering course… Well, she didn't know what she would have done. But he wasn't the geeky, slightly unsure, almost-straight-A senior biomedical engineering major two years younger than his classmates and trying to keep up anymore—and she had admired even that guy. Time changed both of them—it changes everyone—and it changed him into someone who not only fit in, but was fitting in as a leader. He was good at his job, and despite his complaints about the hours he worked, the fact that he was willing to work them was enough for her to know that he loved it. She didn't know back then what she thought he would be doing career-wise, but NCIS suited him in a way she couldn't imagine many other jobs doing.

She turned away from him and resumed her pacing, her mind going right back to where it had just been—on the future of her career. Her shoulder was healing well, much to the amazement of her doctors and the physical therapists and no surprise to her at all, remembering how quickly she was back to the gym after injuries growing up, and there was a better than even chance she'd be medically cleared to fly again within the next four to six weeks.

Of course, if the inquest determined that she was not a suitable pilot, that would be a moot point. God, she had never feared a panel of people as much as she was fearing the panel of officers who'd be determining her fate.

"Captain McNamee," a deep voice called out to her, making her jump in surprise. Tim gave a hard blink—had he really fallen asleep on that uncomfortable-looking bench, despite the coffee he had been mainlining?—and turned toward the direction of the voice, where a Navy captain was approaching, briefcase in hand and cover tucked under his arm.

"Sir," she replied, straightening to attention. She couldn't help but notice the gold wings he wore and couldn't help but wonder if he was a member of the panel at the inquest. As if knowing what she was thinking, he gave a crooked smile that actually looked sincere.

"At ease, Captain," he ordered. She relaxed marginally and waited for him to continue. "Captain Harmon Rabb," he introduced. "I saw your name on the docket and thought I'd come by and say hello."

"Thank you, sir," she replied, instantly recognizing the name. "And, I'm sorry about what you went through."

His smile faltered slightly, and then was replaced with a serious look. "It wasn't your fault, Captain. And I'm sorry about what you went through as well."

"Thank you, sir," she repeated. It might have been too forward, but that didn't stop her from asking, "With all due respect, sir, what brings you to DC? I understand that you're stationed in London?"

The smile was back. "I am. For the time being. We just finished the case I was supposed to be trying while I was in Iran, and now I'm facing the Senate for confirmation hearings."

Even though she was still a junior officer, she knew how the military worked, and there was only one thing a senior O-6 would be doing in front of Senate confirmation hearings. "Good luck on the promotion, Captain."

He gave a wry chuckle. "We'll see about that. I have a few skeletons lurking around in my closest, and Senators don't like skeletons. Even though they seem to be rather comfortable with their own. I'll be glad when they've made a decision either way and I can go back to my wife and kids." He nodded toward the closed doors to the courtroom. "Good luck to you as well, Captain. If things don't go your way, give me a call. I'm always looking for good officers to work with."

If the inquest didn't go her way, she would probably be leaving the Marine Corps and getting a very well-paid job with one of the major engineering firms, but she didn't say that to him. "Thank you for the offer, sir."

He nodded and turned back in the direction he came from, again leaving McNamee and McGee alone in the quiet corridor, but they weren't alone for long. "Captain Harlan McNamee," a young enlisted Marine called out from where he had appeared in front of the courtroom. "Right this way, ma'am."

She found herself suddenly unable to move, until McGee pushed her gently toward the Marine and the door he was holding open. He didn't have to be there—NCIS had already submitted the reports of their investigation, of Guido's actions and how they led to the crash—but she appreciated the support anyway. Even if he looked like he was going to drop of exhaustion at any moment.

She found herself in the middle of the room, standing at attention in front of the five seated Navy and Marine officers, all of whom wore the insignia of a pilot of some sort. "Captain Harlan McNamee," the officer in the middle, a Navy captain, intoned. "Upon review of the evidence supplied by NCIS, as well as an exemplary flying record and reports submitted by Lieutenant Colonel Perry, we find that you are not responsible for the events on 19 October 2011 that led to the loss of two Marine Corps aircraft and the death of First Lieutenant Marco Antonellis." She held her breath without realizing it; these were the words she had been waiting for. "As such," he continued, "you will be returned to active flight status as soon as you are cleared by medical." Now her breath came out in a rush. Active flight status. It was everything she could have hoped for.

"However," the captain continued. Of course. It couldn't be that easy. "As this incident led to the loss of life of one of Squadron 251's pilots, the board is in agreement that returning you to this squadron, or any other combat squadron, is not in the best interests of yourself, the squadron, or the Marine Corps at this time. As such, in light of your exceptional record, you will be transferred to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, for the January test pilot course." He gave that a second to sink in before concluding. "You are dismissed, Captain." He banged a gavel to indicate that the inquest was over; even in her shock, she snapped even further to attention before doing as tight of a 180 as she could in her uniform heels and marched herself through the doors.

Time wrapped her in a hug while she was still processing what had just happened, and even in his exhaustion, recognized that she wasn't up for talking just yet. He gave her a few minutes before finally deciding that if he didn't say something, neither of them would. "Test pilot training," he said. "I know it's not Beaufort—"

"It's actually great," she said, attempting a smile and knowing it wasn't coming out just right. Even though test pilot training was what every adrenaline-junkie pilot wanted deep down—and was exactly what she would need if she wanted even the most remote chance at astronaut selection—it still came with a pang of disappointment. She had worked harder to become a combat pilot—a combat Marine—than she had worked at anything before, and now it was gone.

"You okay?" he asked softly. It took her a minute, but then she nodded, a smile beginning to form as she looked up at him.

"You know, I think I am," she finally said. Before she knew it, she was grinning. "But Pax River is still almost two hours from DC. You going to lend me your Audi so I can make the trip back and forth?"

"You're planning on making the trip back and forth?" He said it with a smile and joking tone, but she knew the question underneath.

"Yeah," she replied. "I am. After all, it's a year-long course. You didn't expect me to just stay at Pax River that whole time, did you?" He smiled back at her and handed over her cover as they turned and walked toward the building's exit. Standing outside, she tilted her head upward and closed her eyes, feeling the weak November sun try to warm her skin, and she knew for sure that she was, indeed, okay. And then she shivered and realized that she was leaving the warm southern weather behind, something she had only done on a few occasions in her life.

She looked over at Tim and decided that it was worth it.

* * *

_A/N, part 2: Yes, I know, it's the end of another story... a bittersweet moment for sure :) I love writing NCIS stories for you guys, because I know how much you enjoy them (and, well, I love reading the reviews that come from it). I always have about a thousand story ideas bouncing around in my head, NCIS stories and original stories and all sorts of stories, but I have no idea when I'll actually have the time to sit down and write (and post) another. But be patient with me, my dear readers, I will be back. For those of you who've read _Falling on Unyielding Ground_, you know there's more of Tony and Ziva to come :) And for those of you who haven't read it, head over to fictionpress and do so. If nothing else, it'll help you pass the time until I come back._

_Until next time..._


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